Celebrities

Tom Cruise 'Actor'

2011-04-09T14:28:00.002+07:00

Cruise returns to the No. 1 position on the Forbes Power 100, a post he held five years ago, thanks to a combination of his awesome earnings from "War of the Worlds" and the media onslaught following his pairing with actress Katie Holmes.

He also generated tons of ink with his couch-jumping antics on "Oprah," his outspoken criticism of the pharmaceutical industry and, of course, his new baby, Suri. Love him or hate him, Cruise is Hollywood's most bankable actor.

Earnings estimates are for June 2005 to June 2006. Figures rounded off where appropriate. Exact figures available on Forbes.com. Includes dollars earned solely from entertainment income. Management, agent and attorney fees have not been deducted. Estimates by forbes; sources include Billboard, Pollstar, Adams Media Research, Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BookScan. Rankings are generated by combining earnings with other metrics: Web mentions on Google press clips compiled by LexisNexis; TV/radio mentions by Factiva; and number of times a celebrity's face appeared on the cover of 26 major consumer magazines.

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt: Hoping for a Career Kickstart

2011-04-09T14:08:00.006+07:00

Trying their best to get their careers back up and running, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt were spotted visiting a friend's home in Pacific Palisades, CA on Friday (April 8).

Walking past paparazzi side-by-side, the former "Hills" stars glanced over at the shutterbugs as they headed inside to spend time with their pals while closing out another week.

The outing comes as Spencer chatted with "On Air with Ryan Seacrest" the previous day (April 7) to confirm that he e-mailed the "American Idol" host's publicist because "Heidi has a gig and I’m around and living right near the station...‘I’m trying to change my image and make myself more likable."

As for Miss Montag's gig, the 24-year-old is said to be teaming up with former "Bachelor" Jake Pavelka and "Real Housewives of New Jersey" star Danielle Staub for a new television project which would feature the group's effort to open their own restaurant, according to People.

Reality TV's favorite couple, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt arrive to a friend's home for a visit. Heidi has begun filming her new reality TV show this week and looks to be excited to be somewhat in the limelight again.

Cameron Diaz and Julia Roberts 'most dangerous' celebrity online searches

2010-08-20T18:49:00.005+07:00

Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts and Jessica Biel are the “most dangerous” celebrities to search for on the internet, a new survey about online dangers found.
Researchers found Hollywood actresses and beautiful models were who online criminals most likely used to lure unsuspecting web users to bogus sites.

They found more than six million unique, newly created pieces of malicious programming were created over the past year, the equivalent to around 60,000 pieces every day.

Experts say hackers and fraudsters often use such websites “booby-trapped” with malicious software and which target the private details of innocent users.

Clicking on strange sites is often fraught with danger but thousands continue to ignore the risks, often to their peril, which leads to computers becoming infected with viruses.

Once a computer is infected, criminals can steal victims' online banking passwords, email passwords, and undertake other “nasty deeds”.

According to the survey of the "most dangerous celebrities", Diaz was top ranked celebrity, just a step ahead of box office powerhouse Julia Roberts and other leading Lady Jessica Biel.

More than one in 10 internet searches about Diaz, 37, led to “risky websites”, which trick visitors into unwittingly downloading viruses that can seize control or computers or mine them for data.

While an fifth of websites that came from searching the term "Cameron Diaz screensavers" were rigged with malicious code.

Searches related to Roberts, 42, who has been promoting her new film "Eat, Pray, Love," resulted in tainted websites nine per cent of the time, but the risk leapt to 20 per cent when pictures or wallpaper were downloaded.

Biel, 28, who topped last year’s list, was the third most dangerous with her overall risk matching Roberts’ but users had a slightly less chance of being offered booby-trapped screensavers.

Victoria's Secret lingerie models Gisele Buendchen, Adriana Lima, and Heidi Klum were among the Top Ten while tennis stars Maria Sharapova and Andy Roddick were 13th and 14th respectively.

The other most-dangerous celebrities to look for online include Jennifer Love Hewitt, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Heidi Klum, Penelope Cruz and Anna Paquin, the star of TV hit "True Blood”.

US President Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, the failed vice presidential candidate, ranked last on the list, released by an internet security firm, making them less threatening topics for internet searches.

“Cybercriminals often use the names of popular celebrities to lure people to sites that are actually laden with malicious software," said Dave Marcus, from McAfee, which commissioned the study.

"Anyone looking for the latest videos or pictures could end up with a malware-ridden computer instead of just trendy content.

"This year, the search results for celebrities are safer than they've been in previous years, but there are still dangers when searching online.

He added: "They know that people want to have screensavers of popular individuals. They follow hot topics on the web and create their poisonous content accordingly and (lay) traps based on the latest trends."

McAfee performed its tests in July using the company's technology for identifying dangerous websites.

The rankings measured the likelihood that someone looking for things, such as photos and videos of those celebrities, would land on a malicious site.
By Andrew
source:telegraph.co.uk

Jennifer Aniston under fire for using the word 'retard’

2010-08-20T16:59:00.003+07:00

Jennifer Aniston, who was promoting her new movie The Switch on US chat show Live with Regis and Kelly, has been criticised by disability groups after using the word in reference to a recent photo shoot in which she posed as Barbra Streisand.

In reference to the Harper’s Bazaar photo shoot, she replied to a question from co-host Regis Philbin by saying “Yes, I play dress up! I do it for a living, like a retard!”

Peter Berns, CEO of The Arc, a non-profit group who support those with intellectual and developmental disabilities said the use of the word was “extraordinarily offensive and inappropriate.”

Speaking to Us Magazine, he said: “Frankly, someone in her position ought to know better.

“She is using language that is offensive to a large segment of the population in this country.”

Aniston was criticised earlier this week following comments about marriage. Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News host, said the 41-year-old actor was “destructive to our society” after she discussed she said: “Women are realising it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child.”

In Aniston's latest film, she plays a single woman who uses a sperm donor to get pregnant.
source:telegraph.co.uk

Demi lovato and Joe Jonas to rekindle romance

2010-08-20T16:42:00.004+07:00

DEMI Lovato and Joe Jonas might — just might — get back together!
The pair split earlier this year after dating on and off for several months.
And even though Joe dumped Demi, he’s still not over her — body language experts insist!

The Final Jam premiere (scrowl through the pics below) apparently prove Joe is “still into” his ex-girlfriend and tour mate.

“Joe still likes Demi because his toe is pointing in her direction. When a guy’s feet are pointed at your direction, that means he likes you,” Dr. Lillian Glass told Hollywood Life.

But Lillian added that “Demi is really not happy to be with him. Even though her mouth is smiling, her eyes are not smiling the whole time.

“They have a lot of tension between them. It’s very awkward.

“She’s trying to show her assertiveness and say, ‘Hey, I’m not little Demi Lovato.’ She wants to be a star within her own right.

“It’s got to be a really big challenge for them.”
article by:showbizspy.com

kang ibing dead at age 64

2010-08-20T16:25:00.003+07:00

Indonesia once again lost another big figure. Kusmayatna Kusumadinata or the fame with the name of Kang Ibing died at age 64 on Thursday (08/19/2010) because of illness. He had admitted to the Hospital Al Islam Bandung, after falling at his home in Cijawura, Bandung, Thursday at around 20:00.

"Dad did have heart disease, but as they mature may be due to fatigue. He just returned from the Soil," said Dikdik Kusumadika, Kang Ibing firstborn.

The man who was born in Sumedang on June 20, 1946, known as a figure of genius. Not only known as a comedian, but also reliably show host, movie stars and preachers.

Together with AOM Kusman, Suryana Fatah, Wawa Sofyan, and Ujang, Kang Ibing, D'comedy group founded Kabayan. Each has its own uniqueness in which its members represent the figure of a particular ethnic group. Suryana Fatah, for example, is known as Holiang Koh, as Mas Sofyan Wawa Sastro. While the figure legends portray Kusmayatna Sunda Kang Maman alias Ibing.

Her figure was so easily recognizable. Kang Ibing often appear complete with holster slung over his shoulder and cap that became his trademark.

Success in the world of buffoonery, he also became involved several times in various films such as Si Kabayan (1975) Ateng The Godfather (1976) Bang Kojak (1977) Si Kabayan dan Gadis Kota (1989) Boss Carmad (1990), Komar Si Glen Kemon Mudik (1990), Warisan Terlarang (1990), Di Sana Senang Di Sini Senang (1990).

Outside the busy life in the entertainment world, he is also known as the preacher who often gave lectures at a number of areas including regional outposts.

Zsa Zsa Gabor declines treatment, opts to spend "final days" at home

2010-08-19T15:28:00.002+07:00

Zsa Zsa Gabor's publicist says the ailing Hungarian-born actress has left a Los Angeles hospital to spend her "final days" at home.
"They wanted to do a liver treatment ... and she's decided she doesn't want to do anymore and (she and her husband Prince Frederic Von Anhalt have) gone home to stay at the house," publicist John Blanchette told TVGuide.com Tuesday.

"She got her last rites (from a priest) ... She's being fed intravenously through a tube and they have all the equipment at the house," Blanchette added. "I think she just wants to spend her final days there."

Gabor, 93, underwent hip-replacement surgery more than a month ago to repair injuries sustained in a fall at her Bel Air, Calif., home.

She was discharged from UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center Aug. 11 but returned to the facility two days later for further treatment.

Nirvana Catalog Lawsuit with Courtney Love Settled

2010-08-19T15:20:00.002+07:00

Nirvana's publishing catalog sale was finally settled up. Court records show a management firm and Courtney Love have settled a $1 million lawsuit over the profits of the sale of Nirvana's publishing catalog. Love is the widow of former Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain. London & Co. sued Love two years ago, claiming she failed to share the earnings of a deal in which sold a portion of Nirvana's catalog for nearly $20 million.

Court records show attorneys for London & Co. and Love told a judge last Wednesday that they had settled and the case was dismissed.

The Hole frontwoman has controlled many of the rights to Cobain and Nirvana's work since his suicide in Seattle in 1994.

Love's attorney, James Janowitz, confirmed the settlement but said he could not provide any further details.

Q&A: Miss Haiti gives hope to devastated country

2010-08-18T15:24:00.001+07:00

NEW YORK, N.Y. — The first Miss Haiti in 22 years is not the typical contestant you'd find in a beauty pageant. She is a young lawyer who speaks four languages and is happy to be able to help her country after the horrific earthquake that devastated the impoverished Caribbean nation last January.

Sarodj Bertin had a privileged childhood in Port-au-Prince until age 9, when her mother, lawyer and opposition leader Mireille Durocher Bertin, was gunned down after announcing the creation of a political party that would compete with that of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the upcoming elections.

Her father then moved Sarodj and his other children to the neighbouring Dominican Republic, where the 24-year-old beauty, who considered her mother her idol, studied law and worked for the International Alliance for Haiti's Recovery.

Nevertheless, she was obsessed with the Miss Universe pageant. After the earthquake, she entered a contest, won and spent the last few months in Puerto Rico with the director of the Miss Dominican Republic and Miss Haiti franchises, Magali Febles, who took charge of her training for Miss Universe, to be held Aug. 23 in Las Vegas. (The pageant will air on NBC and Telemundo, 9 p.m.-11 p.m. EDT.)

In a recent interview at the Miss Universe headquarters in New York, Bertin spoke with The Associated Press about the importance of her new role, how she expects to help her country and a mishap that would have been the end of the world to any other contestant: Her luggage with her entire Miss Universe wardrobe disappeared on a recent flight to Miami.

AP: What are you going to wear now that you have lost your Miss Universe wardrobe?

Bertin: The people of Haiti have been extremely supportive. They learned what happened and a few designers came to me and loaned me their gowns, bags, shoes. And I, I feel like the most special person in the world right now because they cared for me.

AP: You are a lawyer, you're studying for a masters, you speak French, Spanish, English and Creole, and you are learning Mandarin. You are not the typical Miss Universe contestant.

Bertin: The Miss Universe pageant has always been a dream for me, since I was a kid. I used to watch the contest and think, "Why is my country not participating? I want to see Haiti participating." ... When I finished college, I gave up on the idea. I thought it would never happen. I thought someday ... I could celebrate the contest and send a girl myself. So when they told me that they were going to do it this year ... I trembled, I cried, I screamed.

AP: Some criticized the contest, considering it too frivolous, especially amid such a state of emergency.

Bertin: Everybody remembers Haiti in moments of crisis. ... I want them to see also the beauty that there is in my country, to be interested in giving opportunities to the young people. ... They should see it as a light, a hope.

AP: How do you think your participation in the contest can help your country?

Bertin: There are many people who want to help but don't know how and sometimes they need a voice to tell them what are the necessities of the people. I want the people, through me, to be who says what their necessities are.

AP: What are your expectations for the big day?

Bertin: Obviously, if I win I'm going to be the happiest woman. ... (But) regardless what occurs that night, my objectives are the same: work for my people.

Miss Universe Body Paint Photos Stir Controversy

2010-08-17T22:27:00.004+07:00

This year, the Miss Universe pageant is using photos of contestants, including Miss USA 2010 Rima Fakih, in nothing but body paint to promote the August 23 event, and it has one former pageant organizer crying foul.

Angie Meyer, described as a "former pageant-organization worker," expressed her dismay with the photos to Fox News: "It's alarming that this has been turned into a Playboy-esque masquerade, she said. "By implementing topless photos as part of the pageant process, they're putting applicants in an extremely compromising position."

The Miss Universe organization, which is co-run by the Trump Organization and NBC, says they arranged the Las Vegas photo shoot to celebrate the diversity of this year's contestants. In a statement to Yahoo!, Lark-Marie Anton, vice president of marketing and public relations for pageant, defended the promotion: "The contestants who compete at Miss Universe are diverse, as they represent more than 82 countries around the globe. Many of their cultures embrace nudity," she said.
By Lindsay Robertson

Miss indonesia universe 2010 Qory Sandioriva

2010-08-17T16:35:00.003+07:00

Qory Sandioriva which is known as Puteri Indonesia 2009 who is take part as a miss universe 2010 contestant from indonesia has the highest chance to win the miss universe 2010 crown. long with the other 10 contestant. It was said that there's a topless photo session for miss universe 2010 event where rima fakih as USA contestant do a topless photo session together with la toya woods from Trinidad & tobago and maiko itai from japan.

nlike the other contestant Qory Sandioriva will only wear a one piece swimsuit for the swimsuit photosession and she will wear papua traditional costume on miss universe 2010 event.

Before leaving for America, Qory also do some special preparation. Aceh's bloody woman has had a chance to follow the international classes for public speaking, table manner, global issues, body treatments, facial, makeup classes and hair do.

On the night of the Miss Universe 2010 peak, Stefania Fernandez Miss Universe 2009 from Venezuela will be crowned the winner who managed to set aside this year's finalists were followed by 83 participants.

So who will be the winner of Miss Universe 2010 Event? Let's Vote for Qory Sandioriva from Indonesia to be the next miss universe.

MISS UNIVERSE 2010 CONTROVERSY

2010-08-17T16:10:00.003+07:00

NEW YORK, NY – The Miss Universe pageant might be showing a little too much skin for some people’s liking!

The Miss Universe pageant is slated to take place on August 23. The most beautiful women in the world will represent their respective countries and will have the attention of millions – specially men. In an effort to promote the event, organizers are using sultry photos of contestant, including Miss USA 2010 Rima Fakih, in nothing but body paint. Not a good move according to some people.

Angie Meyer, described as a “former pageant-organization worker,” expressed her dismay with the photos to Fox News. “It’s alarming that this has been turned into a Playboy-esque masquerade,” she said. “By implementing topless photos as part of the pageant process, they’re putting applicants in an extremely compromising position.”

According to the Miss Universe organization, which is co-run by the Trump Organization and NBC, the Las Vegas photo shoot was done in an effort to celebrate the diversity of this year’s contestants. In a statement to Yahoo!, Lark-Marie Anton, vice-president of marketing and public relations for the pageant, defended the promotion: “The contestants who compete at Miss Universe are diverse, as they represent more than 82 countries around the globe. Many of their cultures embrace nudity,” she said.

She also pointed out that each contestant chose how much skin to show and she called the photos “a form of artistic expression.” The final word from the organization was: “We feel the images captured are fashionable and cutting edge!”

There is a reason why Anton is vice-president of marketing and probably moving on up. Because she knows that – wait for it – sex or sexiness sells. It’s an unfortunate or fortunate – depending on which way you look at it – aspect of our society. What is so tragic or “Playboy” about these pictures? What moral boundaries are being crossed? Last time we checked there is a swimsuit part of the competition. The pictures are great and the women look great. And in the long run, some controversy is good because it will definitely draw more attention to the competition. Bravo Miss Universe!

Miss Universe Ireland 2010 Rozanna Purcell Has Her Eyes On The 2010 Miss Universe Crown

2010-08-17T16:06:00.002+07:00

Rozanna Purcell, the beautiful Miss Universe Ireland 2010, is one of the top favorites at the Miss Universe 2010 pageant this year and has set her lovely eyes on the coveted crown. “Poison” rocker and “Celebrity Apprentice” winner Bret Michaels and NBC anchor Natalie Morales will be the hosts for the grand finale, which takes place on August 23rd in Las Vegas, USA.

The first thing that you notice about this 19 year old Irish beauty is her gorgeous eyes, and her determined attitude which has an aura of poise and elegance. It’s no wonder that she is also one of the top contenders for this year’s Miss Universe title.

Although Ireland has not gone very far at the Miss Universe pageant over the past few years, Rozanna hopes to change this unfavorable trend and win the Miss Universe 2010 crown for her country. Being young, adventurous and determined, this stunning Miss Universe Ireland 2010 will surely go a long way at the pageant this year.
source:uktodaynews.com

Miss Thailand Universe 2010 catches heat for looking sexy Read more: Miss Thailand Universe 2010 catches heat for looking sexy

2010-08-17T15:55:00.003+07:00

Miss Thailand Universe Fonthip Watcharatrakul is now in Las Vegas for the August 23 Miss Universe pageant. Although the event hasn’t yet taken place, the beauty queen is already facing criticism here in Thailand for the way she’s posing for photos with her fellow contestants.

According to Thai gossip blog Dirtii-laundry.net, media and netizens here say the photos, which show her lifting her leg up in a revealing red dress, are making her look “outstandingly lavish” and are highly inappropriate.

The beauty queen reportedly took to her Facebook page to defend herself against critics: “What do you want me to do? Do you want me to just wear my sash and walk with it on? Is that a Thai woman?"

Michael Douglas has tumor, expects full recovery

2010-08-17T15:44:00.001+07:00

NEW YORK – Michael Douglas has a tumor in his throat and will undergo radiation and chemotherapy.
The Academy Award-winning actor's treatment is scheduled to last eight weeks.

The 65-year-old Douglas says he expects to make a full recovery. He told People magazine in a statement Monday he's "very optimistic." His publicist's assistant, Eli Barach, confirmed his condition to The Associated Press.

The actor is outside the United States, publicist Allen Burry said Monday, declining to give his location or where he would be treated.

Douglas and his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, purchased a house on the island of Bermuda nearly a decade ago, and Zeta-Jones said they planned to raise their two children there.

Douglas won an Oscar for "Wall Street" and appears this fall in the sequel, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps."

Tila Tequila wants to end juggalos gathering

2010-08-17T15:32:00.002+07:00

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Reality TV star Tila Tequila said she wants to bankrupt organizers of the "Gathering of the Juggalos" festival where an angry crowd attacked her with rocks and bottles last weekend.

"I'm hoping this will be the last juggalos gathering that they will ever have," Tequila said Monday in an interview with E-Online.

Her lawyer is preparing to sue the festival, which is organized for fans of the hip-hop group Insane Clown Posse. Festival organizers did not respond to CNN requests for a response. This was the event's 11th year, the fourth in rural Hardin County, Illinois.

Cuts on the Playboy model and singer's face required stitches. And her body is covered with bruises, she said.

An angry crowd pelted Tequila with rocks, bottles and human excrement as she performed early Saturday, she said.

"If you just look at these people, or monsters, whatever they are, they looked very angry and violent," Tequila said.

Video obtained by CNN showed Tequila standing her ground on stage for several minutes, continuing to perform her songs while several bodyguards tried to protect her.

"I'm not going anywhere," she shouted back.

The assault subsided briefly when comedian Tom Green, who had performed earlier, diverted the crowd's attention with a dance.

After Green left the stage, a large rock soared from the crowd, striking Tequila's face. Blood streamed down her cheek.

Green described a mob of hundreds chasing Tequila from the stage and surrounding a trailer where she sought refuge. They rocked the trailer and smashed its windows, he said.

Tequila eventually escaped, but only after windows in her sports utility vehicle were smashed, according to the local sheriff.

The fans are mostly young people who sometimes wear clown make up and are referred to as juggalos and juggalettes.
By Alan Duke, CNN

Axl Rose's Twitter page hacked

2010-08-17T15:03:00.001+07:00

LONDON (Billboard) – If you believed Axl Rose's Twitter account on Sunday night, the Guns N' Roses frontman had unilaterally canceled the band's upcoming European tour.

The message stated: "All upcoming Guns N' Roses dates are officially canceled. Please contact your place of purchase for any refunds."

Someone had hacked into his account, though it always seemed likely to be a hoax: Rose is not active on Twitter and this is the first post in three months. Rose's other messages were posted via iPhone and this latest tweet was via mobile web. It was also curious that it had the British spelling of "canceled."

Nevertheless, it proved disruptive as GNR's tour partners in the U.K. and Europe had to investigate the announcement. Ticket holders who saw early media reports of the supposed cancellation will doubtless be seeking refunds.

The 26-date trek kicks in England off with a pair of headlining stands at the Reading and Leeds festivals on August 27 and August 29 respectively. It wraps at Barcelona's olympic stadium on October 23.
By Andre Paine

Hilary Duff and Mike Comrie Get Married

2010-08-16T18:13:00.004+07:00

Hilary Duff is officially a married woman!

The 22-year-old actress wed her hockey player beau, Mike Comrie, in an intimate sunset ceremony at a $29 million estate near the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, Calif. on Saturday, UsMagazine.com has confirmed.

Approximately 100 of the couple's closest family members and friends enjoyed poolside cocktails before the ceremony began at sundown.

Clad in a strapless Vera Wang gown with her hair in a bun, Duff made her way down the aisle -- lined with candles and rose petals -- with her mother, Susan, by her side. Duff's older sister, Haylie, served as maid of honor.

"It was one of the most beautiful weddings I've ever seen," a witness told Us of the pair's 20-minute ceremony. "Absolutely stunning. They thought of every last detail and it was an incredible sight."

Together for more than two years, Duff and Comrie, 29, got engaged during a Hawaiian vacation in February.

After Comrie got down on one knee and presented his girlfriend with a 14-carat, radiant-cut sparkler in Maui, Duff told Us she went full tilt into wedding planning mode.

"[I] came home to a big stack of magazines from my family," said Duff, who had "tear sheets all over my house" in her quest to find the perfect gown. "It's very exciting!"

Though the pair often endure a long-distance relationship, Duff says she and her new husband have a surprisingly "natural" relationship.

"We both have busy jobs, and we're both very focused people, so that helps," the actress tells Us. "Since we are apart so much, it's not like one person is at home waiting for the other."

What makes Comrie her perfect match?

"He's a great guy," Duff gushes. "I've never met anyone who could say a bad word about him. He's generous, caring, funny. We just laugh our heads off, which I need in my life ... He's unique. I wouldn't want to be with someone who wasn't unique."

Mark Zuckerberg Biography

2010-08-16T16:31:00.002+07:00

Mark Zuckerberg, born May 14, 1984, was a Harvard undergraduate when he started the Facebook social networking website. An early fan of computers who had developed a "smart" mp3 player in high school, Zuckerberg had previously been reprimanded by the Harvard administration for his Facemash site, a Harvard-specific photo rating site that operated like HotOrNot.com but used photographs taken from Harvard's online facebook, without the subjects' permission.

(A facebook, lower-case, is a collection of student photographs designed to introduce students to each other.)
In February of 2004, he started "The Facebook," which took the goals of those lower-case traditional facebooks and combined them with the social networking of Myspace-like sites. Unlike Facemash, The Facebook was opt-in -- any Harvard student could create an account, and by the end of the month, more than half of the undergraduates had done so. Zuckerberg expanded the service quickly, offering it to all Ivy League schools by the end of the spring and more schools the following semester. The Wirehog site was created as a companion filesharing site for Facebook users, and by the end of 2004, The Facebook had over one million registered users.

The advertising revenue made it easier to raise venture capital, and Zuckerberg and his associates purchased the facebook.com domain from its previous holder and dropped the "The" from the site's name. Over time, Facebook became more and more inclusive, opening its doors to all college students, faculty members, and alumni (anyone with a confirmed educational-domain email address), and in 2006 added networks for high school students. Since fall of 2006, the site has been open to anyone who wishes to join -- a shift away from the student-centric origins which many users have decried.

Meanwhile, a Craigslist-like Facebook Marketplace has been added to the site, along with a platform for offering applications. Microsoft purchased a 1.6% stake in the company for $240 million in October of 2007, and the following month the Facebook Beacon service premiered -- a controversial initiative that blends marketing and social networking, which has come under considerable criticism for the way that it can broadcast information about a user's activity outside of the Facebook site, without adequately warning them.

Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto to operate Facebook full time, taking a leave of absence from Harvard; the Facebook offices now occupy four downtown buildings.

Eva Mendes and Thandie Newton Wore The Same Dress

2010-08-16T16:09:00.002+07:00

Celebrity dresses have always been the most anticipated topic, not only for media, but also for their fans. However, this time, the discussion is, who look gorgeous wearing the same dress, Eva MendesEva Mendes or Thandie NewtonThandie Newton.

Two gorgeous women, "The Other Guys" actress Eva Mendes and the "2012" star Thandie Newton were spotted on different occasions in two different continents donned in the absolutely same metallic Vivienne WestwoodVivienne Westwood dress.

On July 23rd, Eva Mendes was seen wearing the same dress while she attended the press conference of her upcoming action-comedy movie, "The Other Guys". Eva Mendes chose to wear Casadei heels that complemented the dress perfectly.

And Thandie Newton wore the same frock one month back at the jewelry launch party of designer, SolangeAzagury-Patridge's new Bond Street store. Newton was wearing Georgian Goodman strapped sandals with the dress.

Same dress has given birth to a dilemma as to how to decide which one of the two, Eva Mendes and Thandie, look hot in the dress.

32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business

2010-08-16T15:36:00.003+07:00

Facebook’s not just for keeping tabs on friends and filling out quizzes — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It’s great for marketing your products, landing gigs and connecting with your customers.

Here are 32 ways to use Facebook in your business.

Manage Your Profile

1. Fill out your profile completely to earn trust.
2. Establish a business account if you don’t already have one.
3. Stay out of trouble by reading the Facebook rules regarding business accounts.
4. Install appropriate applications to integrate feeds from your blog and other social media accounts into your Facebook profile. (Although you should be careful before integrating your Twitter feed into your Faceboook profile, as a stream of tweets can seem overwhelming to your contacts.)

5. Keep any personal parts of your profile private through Settings.
6. Create friends lists such as “Work,” “Family” and “Limited Profile” for finer-grained control over your profile privacy.
7. Post a professional or business casual photos of yourself to reinforce your brand.
8. Limit business contacts’ access to personal photos.
9. Post your newsletter subscription information and archives somewhere in your profile.
10. Connect and share with others Obtain a Facebook vanity URL so that people can find you easily.
11. Add your Facebok URL to your email signature and any marketing collateral (business cards, etc.) so prospects can learn more about you.
12. Post business updates on your wall. Focus on business activities, such as “Working with ABC Company on web site redesign.”
13. Share useful articles and links to presentation and valuable resources that interest customers and prospects on your wall, to establish credibility.
14. Combine Facebook with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, when someone asks question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.
15. Before traveling, check contacts locations so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.
16. Research prospects before meeting or contacting them.
17. Upload your contacts from your email client to find more connections.
18. Use Find Friends for suggestions of other people you may know to expand your network even further.
19. Look for mutual contacts on your contacts’ friends lists.
20. Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
21. Market your products by posting discounts and package deals.
22. Share survey or research data to gain credibility.
23. Use Facebook Connect to add social networking features to your web site.
24. Suggest Friends to clients and colleagues — by helping them, you establish trust.
25. Buy Facebook ads to target your exact audience.
26. Read up on Facebook Beacon to see if it might be useful for you.
27. Use Network, Group and Fan Pages Start a group or fan page for product, brand or business. Unless you or your business is already a household name, a group is usually the better choice.
28. Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company site, newsletter subscription information and newsletter archives.
29. Post upcoming events including webinars, conferences and other programs where you or someone from your company will be present.
30. Update your group or fan page on a regular basis with helpful information and answers to questions.
31. Join network, industry and alumni groups related to your business.
32. Use search to find groups and fan pages related to your business by industry, location and career.

Tila Tequila ‘Attacked’ By Juggalos. According to Tila Tequila.

2010-08-16T15:12:00.003+07:00

Full Disclosure: Even though a ridiculous amount of you wrote in, I really didn’t want to cover this story because it forces me to talk about two things that should’ve never been in the same place at the same time unless someone’s testing hydrogen bombs: Tila Tequila and Juggalos, America’s saddest punchline since the south. So on that note, let’s get this thing over with:

Seen above arriving at LAX Saturday, Tila Tequila claims to have been “attacked” while performing at the Gathering of the Juggalos in Illinois Friday night and felt compelled to send TMZ pictures of her alleged “injuries.” “Injuries” so horrific, she waited almost an entire day to fly to LA, where the paparazzi were conveniently ready for her, before allegedly going to the hospital. But we’ll get to that after Tila’s sack of bullshit:

"Tila gave TMZ a very detailed account of what happened, saying: “I went onstage and immediately, before I even got on stage, DUDES were throwing HUGE STONE ROCKS in my face, beer bottles that slit my eye open, almost burnt my hair on fire cuz they threw fire crackers on stage, and they even took the sh*t out of the port-0-potty and threw sh*t and piss at me when I was onstage.”
She went on to say: “These people were trying to kill me. So then after the last blow to my head with the firecracker they threw at me exploded, my bodygaurd and the other security grabbed me and ran as fast as they could to the shitty trailor. Since their security SUCKS, the 2 thousand people ran after us, trying to kill me. They almost got me so they finally reach the trailor, blood all over myself, cant stop bleeding, then all of a sudden, all 2 thousand people surround the trailor and busts the windows!!! Even the guys INSIDE with me were shaking! Their hands were shaking cuz they were so scared! So 3 guys inside the trailor had to grab a table and push it over the broken windows and grabbed all the chairs they could find so hold the people from outside back. It was scary as hell!”

TMZ also posted a video of the alleged “attack” which raises even more questions because, surprise, it proves pretty much jackshit:

1. Why did absolutely nothing happen in this video?
2. No, really, why did I just watch a three minute and thirty second video of Tila repeatedly saying “I don’t give a fuck” while her bodyguards basically batted away everything that was thrown at her?
3. Where the fuck did Tom Green come from?
4. If Tila Tequila’s injuries were “spurting blood,” how was she able to board a plane with nothing but a Band-Aid covering her severe “injuries?” Did she use elf magic to increase its absorbency or has Johnson & Johnson finally harnessed the power of wormholes to cover up boo-boos?
5. Does TMZ realize the source of this story is Tila Tequila? Because a.) I feel like someone forgot to ask that during the editorial process and b.) I’m still convinced she’s a figment of my imagination.

Look, based on everything we’ve seen from Tila Tequila in the past year – fake pregnancies, fake lesbian engagement, fake multiple personalities, fake Shawne Merriman abuse, etc. – there’s no way in midget hell I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt here. In fact, I don’t even believe it was her in that video and that little boy’s parents are going to be pissed when they see that shit. No, my theory is none of this even happened and she spent another Friday night masturbating in a shoebox before concocting a new scam to get her face on TMZ again. I dare you to prove me wrong.

Barack Obama declares Gulf Coast 'open for business'

2010-08-15T16:04:00.004+07:00

Reuters – U.S. President Barack Obama and his daughter Sasha swim at Alligator Point in Panama City Beach, Florida
By JULIE PACE
PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. – President Barack Obama declared Gulf Coast beaches clean, safe and open for business Saturday as he brought his family to the Florida Panhandle and promised residents that the government wouldn't forget them once efforts to stop the leak are finished.

On a warm and muggy day, Obama pledged to "keep up our efforts until the environment is cleaned, polluters are held accountable, businesses and communities are made whole, and the people of the Gulf Coast are back on their feet."

Obama is in the region for a brief weekend trip with first lady Michelle Obama, daughter Sasha (her sister Malia is at summer camp) and the family dog, Bo. Their 27-hour stop in the Sunshine State is as much a family vacation as it is an attempt by the president to convince Americans that this region, so dependent on tourism revenue, is safe for travel — and that its surf is clean.

To reinforce that message, Obama and Sasha swam in the Gulf's waters on Saturday, according to White House spokesman Bill Burton. The highly anticipated dip was away from the media's view.

Obama said his family planned to "enjoy the beach and the water — to let our fellow Americans know that they should come on down here."

The first family ventured to Lime's Bayside Bar & Grill, where they relaxed on an outdoor deck overlooking the water and ate a lunch of fish tacos, chicken tenders and burgers. After a quiet afternoon at their beachfront hotel, the Obamas headed into town for a family miniature golf outing.

Nine-year old Sasha stole the show, hitting a hole-in-one off the first tee, much to the delight of her father, an avid golfer.

"That's how you do it!" the president exclaimed, before shooting par with his two strokes on the first hole.

The White House scheduled the trip after facing criticism that the president wasn't heeding his own advice that Americans vacation in the Gulf. Obama has vacationed in North Carolina and Maine this year and is heading to Martha's Vineyard, off the Massachusetts coast, later in August. Mrs. Obama also traveled to Spain this month with Sasha.

Gulf Coast residents and local officials are hoping the president's stop here will jump-start the tourism industry, which has been reeling since the spill. Although only 16 of the 180 beaches in the western part of the Panhandle were affected by the spill, tourism officials say many potential visitors have stayed away, deterred by images of oil-slicked waters and tarball-strewn beaches in other parts of the region.

"It's the biggest single commercial you could imagine," Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said of the president's visit.

Crist was among the local officials and small business owners who joined Obama earlier in the day at a meeting to discuss the pace of recovery efforts.

Obama, who is on his fifth trip to the region since the spill began, said he knows Gulf Coast residents have been frustrated by the slow payment of claims from a $20 billion BP fund for those who have suffered damages as a result of the spill, and he pledged to rectify that.

"Any delay by BP or those managing the new funds are unacceptable, and I will keep pushing to get these claims expedited," the president said.

Alabama's attorney general on Thursday sued BP and others companies associated with the spill, seeking unspecified economic and punitive damages. At least 300 federal lawsuits have been filed in 12 states against BP and the other three main companies involved in the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drill rig.

The president's trip came as the government's point man on the Gulf spill said he wants additional testing before he orders BP to finish drilling a relief well that will allow the oil giant to plug the well for good.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told reporters on Saturday that it could be late Monday or early Tuesday before officials know the results of those tests.

That means it would be Tuesday at the earliest before he gives his final order to proceed with the relief well, and next weekend at the earliest before the relief well intercepts the runaway well.

Why Was Jean-Claude Van Damme Deemed Expendable for 'The Expendables'?

2010-08-15T15:56:00.004+07:00

by: Mike Ryan
In "The Expendables," Sylvester Stallone's latest guns-blazing return to the multiplex, the actor/director assembled a dream team of action stars to assist him with the very important work of blowing up everything in sight. Most notably, he recruited onetime big-screen rivals like Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dolph Lundgren for his latest cinematic mission. An impressive collective of talent, to be sure, but the all-star roster of shoot-'em-up heroes has at least one glaring omission: Jean-Claude Van Damme. Whither the "Muscles from Brussels," star of "Hard Target," "Timecop," and "Universal Solider"?

Van Damme, it turns out, did get a call from Stallone to join his team of Expendables, but he wasn't thrilled with the pitch. He told TotalFilm, "Stallone gave me a part in his next movie. [He] said, 'You're gonna make lots of money.' I don't want to hear that, I want to hear what was my character. He was unable to tell what it's going to be." So Van Damme, showing admirable dedication to the purity of his craft, passed.

In a 2009 press conference, Van Damme recounted pretty much the same story, adding that he'd advised Stallone that, instead of doing "The Expendables," Stallone should make a movie where Sly plays a "tough priest." According to Van Damme, Stallone found this "insulting." If nothing else, Van Damme does do a pretty nifty Stallone impression.

At this year's Comic-Con, Stallone addressed the casting offers, including two other high-profile no-shows that were not meant to be. His take differs slightly: "I talked to Van Damme. I talked to [Steven] Segal. I even talked to Chuck Norris." He then added, "But there are certain considerations, like insanity."

In fairness to Van Damme, the actor does seem to have a somewhat more introspective take on his career of late. In 2008, he starred in the independent film "JCVD," playing a fictionalized version of himself: an out-of-work action star who finds himself at a bank while it's being robbed. Of course, Van Damme's newfound introspection doesn't explain why he starred in 2009's "Universal Soldier: Regeneration."

"The Expendables," opening this weekend, tells the story of a group of mercenaries who attempt to overthrow the government of a small South American island. In addition to the aforementioned line-up of Stallone, Willis, Schwarzenegger, and Lundgren, Jet Li, Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke, and Jason Statham join in on the mayhem.

Sly Stallone has 'The Expendables' EXPLODING on the big screen

2010-08-14T16:55:00.002+07:00

Think about every action hero in cinematic history who has operated a firearmJet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Slylvester Stallone in "The Expendables.

Well maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit there, but honestly not by much. Sylvester Stallone (who in addition to starring in the film also directed and co-wrote the script with David Callaham) has kept a relatively low profile during the last decade or so.

However, with his revival of the Rocky (2006's Rocky Balboa) and Rambo (2008's Rambo) franchises, he has proven that he still can draw at the box office. And chances are he will have another hit on his hands with "The Expendables," which pays homage to the action films of the '80's and '90's with its over the top "shoot 'em up"/"knock down drag out" action scenes.

In the film, Stallone plays Barney Ross, the leader of a group of mercenaries who is recruited by Mr. Church (played by Bruce Willis) to invade South America to takedown their dictator, General Garza. Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger also has a cameo as Trench, who passes on the job offered by Church. When Church then offers a price of $5 million dollars for the operation to Ross, he checks out the territory along with Lee Christmas (played magnificently by Jason Statham) prior to beginning the mission. When the two barely survive the trip with their lives intact, they realize there is more to this operation than meets the eye, and that the group would be heading into enemy territory to also dispose of James Munroe (Eric Roberts), who has an axe to grind with the American government. Munroe's right-hand man is Dan Paine, who is played by WWE Hall Of Famer "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.

Make no mistake, this isn't Shakespeare we're watching here, but Stallone will probably be the first to tell you that. He has indeed made some clunkers along the way (remember the Saturday Night Live skit with Norm MacDonald complaining that he was saved in a car accident by Judge Dredd? Classic), but what makes "The Expendables" work is the main cast of characters who get just enough screen time to where they compliment each other nicely. Moreover, the wonderfully "choreographed" action scenes are nothing to sneeze at either (particularly the scene which Ross and Statham escape the island on their seaplane). There is literally so much action going on at times that the viewer can lose sight of what is actually transpiring. With the majority of the cast no stranger to violent hand to hand combat (whether in real life or in movies), Stallone probably offered some direction, but from the looks of it some of them (mainly five-time Ultimate Fighting Champion Randy Couture) really didn't need it.

The humorous interplay amongst the cast (utilized most effectively with Stallone and Statham) is strong without coming off as corny. There is probably an action sequence every five minutes or so. And while not AS gory as the latest Rambo movie, the death toll and explosions at the conclusion of "The Expendables" most likely exceeds the previously mentioned film. In fact, the action scenes are so intense that Stallone suffered numerous injuries during the making of this movie. He is still in extraordinary shape at 64 and turns in a solid performance as Ross as does Roberts.

However, the scene stealer in the movie is clearly Statham- who along with (but to a lesser extent) Jet Li are given the majority of the acting and action scenes. Overall, this is Statham's biggest project to date, and he passes the test with flying colors. Other members of the team include former Philadelphia Eagle Terry Crews and Couture (you know, the guy who says "Let's go princess" at the end of his commercials for his Tower 200 home gym). Stallone is also reunited with his Rocky IV co-star Dolph Lundgren, who plays a sniper on the team whose role is a mystery of sorts. Mickey Rourke rounds out the gang as Tool, a former member-turned tattoo artist who gives Christmas a run for his money in the knife throwing department.

While it's pretty neat to see Stallone, Willis, and Schwarzenegger finally share the screen together (although it's only about four minutes), "The Expendables" has some weak points. The action scenes at times seem like a substitute for plot development- which has the potential to be greater than it was. Rourke is vastly underused and only appears in about four scenes throughout the film, and Crews and Couture remain on the sidelines for the most part (until it comes time to open a can of whoop ass, of course.)

Overall, I'd give "The Expendables" three and a half stars out of five. It doesn't take itself too seriously, passes quickly, is pretty funny despite the carnage, and sets itself up for a sequel.
article by:Joe Valle

Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone inducted into NBA Hall

2010-08-14T16:04:00.004+07:00

NBA Hall of Fame inductees Karl Malone, left, and Scottie Pippen share a light moment during the enshrinement news conference at the Hall of Fame Museum in Springfield, Mass. (Elise Amendola / AP)

A version of this story appears on page 7B of the Saturday, Aug. 14, 2010, print edition of the Detroit Free Press.

Scottie Pippen and Karl Malone were inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Ill., on Friday, recognized as individuals and as part of the Dream Team.

Pippen opened his acceptance speech by praising Michael Jordan for being "the best teammate."

Malone struggled with his emotions throughout his speech, especially at the end when he recalled his mother, saying she had died seven years ago Friday.

"I'm here because of her," he said.

The 2010 class also includes the Dream Team that won the 1992 Olympics.

CYCLING: Three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador was beaten by future teammate Michael Morkov in a 40-mile street race in Herning, Denmark. Contador finished 80 seconds behind Morkov and three others.

TENNIS: Kim Clijsters reached the semifinals at the Cincinnati Open, beating Italy's Flavia Pennetta, 7-6 (8-6), 6-4, in Mason, Ohio. No. 10 Maria Sharapova also reached the semifinals, beating France's Marion Bartoli, 6-1, 6-4.

... Venus Williams withdrew from next week's WTA tournament in Montreal, citing an injured left knee. ... Defending champion Andy Murray cruised past David Nalbandian, 6-2, 6-2, to advance to the semifinals at the Rogers Cup in Toronto. Top-seeded Rafael Nadal defeated Philipp Kohlschreiber, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4. Roger Federer earned a 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (7-5) victory over Tomas Berdych.

TRACK AND FIELD: Tyson Gay ran the fastest time in the world this year, winning the 100-meter final at the Diamond League meet in London in 9.78 seconds.

Eat Pray Love

2010-08-13T21:46:00.001+07:00

-Directed by Ryan Murphy
-Screenplay by Ryan Murphy and Jennifer Salt
-Starring Julia Roberts, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis, Billy Crudup and Javier Bardem

Eat Pray Love is a sumptuous new travel, food and self-help show hosted by the always likable Julia Roberts.

Well, what did you think a Hollywood-made adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir would look like?

Director Ryan Murphy – whose previous feature was his adaptation of Augusten Burroughs's memoir Running with Scissors – and co-screenwriter Jennifer Salt strive to capture the tone of Gilbert's chatty-girlfriend literary style but fall back too often on voice-over narration provided by Roberts as the globe-trotting Liz.

They also try to visualize some of the savoury private moments and revelations during the author's inner journey of soul healing. But it's a near-impossible task in a film that must, by its very nature, show us an exterior world and thus hit all the stops – Italy! India! Bali! – on Gilbert's adventure and visit most of the people she met.

Running more than two hours – a very long time for an adaptation of a book without a plot – Eat Pray Love is like an overstuffed lightweight suitcase, with little room for us to feel the emotional connections Liz makes with new friends along the way. Although there are a lot of hugs.

Of course, with Julia Roberts as our constant onscreen companion, the trip has its pleasures. She does some lovely work here, particularly in a few one-on-one scenes with well-cast supporting players who slow down the pace. And she revels in her postcard moments, like eating a tasty breakfast on the floor of a ramshackle Rome apartment or cycling down a country road in Bali.

The film opens with a too-long prologue in which Liz’s marriage (Billy Crudup as the restless husband) unravels, followed by a rebound romance with a young actor (James Franco) destined for the same fate. Her publisher pal (Viola Davis) isn’t convinced Liz’s plan to leave New York for a year – dividing her time equally between the cafés of Rome, an ashram in India and the village of a Balinese medicine man – will solve her problems. We glean that Liz’s main issues are that she’s a serial monogamist who loses herself in relationships and feels empty inside.

At Liz’s final port of call, she literally crashes into Felipe (she on a bike, him in a jeep). Javier Bardem fits the bill as the sexy, still-smarting divorced father of two grown-up kids and generates some genuine warmth with Roberts, although by the time we get to Bali we’re starting to get anxious about getting our exit visa.

Roberts’s best moments are her scenes with Richard Jenkins (HBO’s Six Feet Under), who plays a cantankerous Texan who christens her “Groceries” (she eats a lot) and, despite her initial protests, takes her under his wing at the ashram. He has Liz’s number, barking out Dr. Phil-esque life slogans at every turn, but Jenkins lets us know there is real pain just under the surface. When he finally sits down and spills out his story, the movie, for the first and only time, stands still. It’s a riveting scene, yet its emotional impact is nearly spoiled by a bit of whimsy the filmmakers follow it up with, showing Liz letting go of her pain.

In the end, Eat Pray Love has to inform us, via Liz’s narration, that the lessons of friendship can be just as transformative as meditation and the words of gurus, because all we’ve just seen is a whole lot of faces and places.

Devouring life 'Eat Pray Love' star found herself nourished by co- stars, exotic locales

2010-08-13T21:28:00.005+07:00

The burning question for Oscar winner Julia Roberts is exactly how many bowls of pasta did she eat in Rome for a dining scene in "Eat Pray Love"?

According to Roberts, it was six.

"It was all delicious," assures the actress, who doesn't appear to have retained a single ounce of what she might have picked up from her round-the-world, carb-filled moviemaking adventure.

"(Director) Ryan Murphy and (producer) Dede Gardner hired people who would just be in charge of making it look great and taste great," she adds, referring to food stylist Susan Spungen, who previously provided her expertise on the hit film "Julie & Julia."

"Eat Pray Love" is a romantic drama based on Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir about a peripatetic divorcee on a quest to replenish her heart and soul after her marriage ends.

During production, a fully committed Roberts also devoured eight slices of pizza during a 45-minute span one morning for another scene involving her character indulging in the gastronomical pleasures of Naples.

"In that scene, in particular, I sort of relished just wolfing down (the pizza) because I felt like my character was excited to be there, to be eating this pizza," she recalls.

In all, the 42-year-old Roberts figures she gained about 10 pounds during the five-month shoot that took her from New York to Italy to India to Bali. Willingly subjecting herself to the delectable delicacies of Italy, the heat and mystery of India and the tropical beauty of Bali, were well worth it, she says. Of course, the wife and mother of three had to give careful consideration to taking on the project not only because of the time commitment but also traveling far from home.

"A lot more math goes into a decision like this than just, 'Do I want to drive to Sony (Pictures in Hollywood) for three days a week for a couple of months,'" she says.

As for "Eat Pray Love," the convincing factors to take on such a demanding and time-consuming role were twofold: Roberts loved the book, even before it became a best seller, and she wanted to work with Ryan Murphy, the creatordirector of the award-winning drama "Nip/Tuck" and the hot new musical TV series, "Glee."

"I saw 'Nip/Tuck,' and I knew he was going to be a bright guy," says Roberts. "I was really impressed with him. That's what kept me in it when I was still wondering about it. He gave me all the room and all the time to consider it because he didn't want me if I wasn't fully invested in the amount of this commitment."

So Roberts packed up the family and did what many actors aspire to do -- to see the world, work with a terrific cast and crew and make an entertaining movie.

Murphy deliberately chose to shoot the film chronologically -- which doesn't always happen in moviemaking -- and that suited Roberts just fine.

"It was a great luxury," the actress says. "But it also was a necessity of emotional evolution. You can't start any movie in Bali and then leave. So there's that. ... It was important for us to create the steps that she took and understand very clearly how she got from one point to the next and one place to the next, and how the relationships evolved and what she gleaned from each one to the next."

That meant spending a few weeks at a time working with various cast members. In New York, she co-starred with Billy Crudup and James Franco, who play her husband and lover, respectively. Then it was off to Rome, where she co-starred with European actors including Luca Argentero and Tuva Novotny, who play a couple who fall in love while showing her around. Having satiated her desire

for physical nourishment, Liz moves on to India where she joins an Ashram, in hopes of getting in touch with her spiritual side. Among her fellow seekers are Richard from Texas (played by Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins) and an anxious young bride-to-be. After fi nding inner peace, Liz travels to Bali, where she meets a divorced dad (Javier Bardem) who is trying to come to terms with his adult son's leaving the nest. Despite their instant chemistry, Liz wavers on whether she wants to enter a serious relationship having just recently rediscovered herself.

For Roberts it was like making four movies consecutively. As one segment finished, it was off to the next location, and a whole new set of co-stars. She counts herself lucky to have had the opportunity to work with so many different people.

"I have to say Billy Crudup is one of my favorite actors," she says during a press conference, making her co-star blush. "I've seen him onstage. I've seen him in movies. He's just always been one of my very favorites."

She admits she was a little intimidated by Jenkins when she fi rst met him.

"We'd had such a great time in rehearsal," she recalls. "But I was probably the most nervous (with him) because that relationship (between the characters) sort of informs a certain anxiety and nervousness in my character."

Working with the Oscar winner Bardem in Bali three or four months into the shoot was a whole other experience.

"Javier showed up and it was like deciding to get a puppy," she says with her trademark Julia Roberts laugh. "He came in with all this gusto and enthusiasm and excitement and he was like, 'Do you want to read some of the scenes and go over stuff?' and I was like 'Uh, not really,' but his excitement was so contagious, it really did infuse us with energies we thought were long gone."

Like her character, Roberts has evolved over the two decades that she's been in the public eye.

"Not in the urgent pursuit way that (Liz) experiences it," she says of becoming a wife and mother. "I defi nitely knew my life would continue to evolve until I found that place where I could fully occupy and live in, which is the home I have now. But I relate to her search and her pursuit. It was definitely great to have a fulfilled sense of my own life and be playing some of these scenes, and then come home at the end of the day and be like, 'OK, everybody's here. We're good.'"

Originally published by B Entertainment News Wire.

Jennifer Lopez out as 'American Idol' judge

2010-08-13T17:17:00.002+07:00

Jennifer Lopez won't be a judge on "American Idol" after all, according to a source close to the situation.

The singer-actress had been closing a deal to be a permanent judge on the show for its upcoming 10th season but the deal fell apart.

"Her demands got out of hand," says the source. "Fox had just had enough."

With Simon Cowell and Ellen DeGeneres both departing the talent search, the network had been pursuing a number of celebrities as potential judges, including Aerosmith's Steven Tyler.

But now that Lopez is out of the running, the network may be looking at their earlier top picks again.

Other reports have said that the panel could go back to the original three-judge format.

Fox had no comment. A rep for Lopez did not immediately return calls for comment.

by:people.com

Halle Berry: 'I love being naked'

2010-08-13T17:03:00.001+07:00

Talented and sexy Halle Berry has said that she feels "empowered" when naked.

The Bond girl, in an interview with Vogue, admitted that she has not always accepted her body but feels more at peace with her flaws as she gets older.

"I love the naked female form... I just feel like that's the most empowered position you can be in," she explained.

"[Acceptance] comes with age. I've been slowly getting there. If the world wouldn't persecute me, I'd take nude pictures every day of the week."

the actress also discussed her relationship with ex-husband Gabriel Aubry, insisting that the pair remain friends.

Drew Barrymore Enjoyed Working With Justin Long

2010-08-12T18:37:00.003+07:00

The actress — who refuses to confirm whether she and Long are still in a relationship — teamed up with Justin for upcoming romantic comedy Going the Distance, which tells the story about a young couple trying to make a long-distance relationship work.

And Barrymore says she enjoyed sharing the screen with Long.

“He, by the way, is the most wonderful person to work with,” she said.

“I’m so excited about this movie. As a girl, I relate to this movie and the boy in me loves the comedy in this movie. It is a very good date movie!

“I loved getting to do a film with someone that I do have a history with and we could bring a tremendous amount of honesty to it. We sort of saw that as a surreal opportunity and maybe it will feel a little more relatable-to because it is kind of real.”

Drew — who first took cocaine at the age of 12 — recently admitted she experienced “tremendous pain” growing up in the public eye.

“My hedonistic moment wasn’t that tumultuous,” she said. “It just happened at such a young age so it seemed way crazier than it was. Everyone goes to a point where they do stuff excessively.

“And the majority of people bounce back. Some of them fall into the rabbit hole – I just got mine out of the way early.

“There were moments when I experienced tremendous pain with everything being so known. You’re like, ‘Can I f***ing f**k up or have an embarrassing moment or do anything in f***ing private?’ ”

article by:showbizspy.com

Taylor Swift enshrined in bowling hall of fame

2010-08-12T15:23:00.002+07:00

ARLINGTON, Texas — Bowling fans have picked country star Taylor Swift as their 2010 choice for celebrity induction into the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame.

Swift barely beat pop star Justin Bieber to secure her lane in bowling history. They were among nine celebrities the Bowling Proprietors' Association of America nominated for their public support of the sport.

Swift has been spotted and photographed bowling with friends.

The association, in making the announcement Wednesday, says this is the first year that the celebrity induction process has been opened to fans. Nearly 1.3 million votes were cast online.

The museum is based in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Arlington. Swift's photo and plaque will be displayed at the site later this summer

Celebs probed over sex clips

2010-06-10T22:34:00.002+07:00

Television presenter Luna Maya (left) and model Cut Tari (centre) were allegedly having sex with singer Ariel Peterpan (right) in separate videos that were posted online on Friday and Tuesday respectively.
JAKARTA - THREE Indonesian celebrities who allegedly appeared in sex videos posted on the Internet will be questioned over possible breaches of a new anti-pornography law, police said yesterday.

Two explicit clips widely circulated online this week appear to show popular singer Ariel Peterpan having sex with television presenter Luna Maya, his current girlfriend, and model Cut Tari, his former girlfriend.

Six-minute and two-minute clips were posted on the Internet last Friday apparently showing him in bed with Luna in a hotel. They quickly made the rounds on websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Another clip hit the Internet on Tuesday allegedly showing Ariel having sex with Cut, who is married.

The term 'Ariel Peterporn' subsequently became one of the most popular searches on Twitter this week, beating hot topics such as the launch of the latest iPhone.

Chief police detective Ito Sumardi said the celebrities would be asked how the clips had appeared on the Internet, Agence France-Presse reported.

PHOTOS: THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK

Hot Video of Ariel Peterpan and Cut Tari

2010-06-10T17:43:00.002+07:00

Ariel Peterpan created a new sensation after his video with celebrity luna maya which spread viral in the internet.Now Ariel Peterpan is back with another hot video with cut tari. Now the Hot Video of Cut Tari and Ariel peterpan is circulating in the internet. The video was seems taken at a luxury hotel room.

Its been disclosed by Abhimanyu Wachjoewidajat multimedia practitioners, while talking with detikhot by phone on Tuesday (06/08/2010).The Video been taken viral through forums

Cut Tari in the video wearing a blue dress with a black tank top innards. .

Is it true star in the video that’s the question?But the videos of Ariel Peterpan and Cut Tari really Hot.

Luna Maya, Ariel Get Indecent Proposal; Cut Tari Denies Nude Woman is Her

2010-06-10T17:15:00.003+07:00

High-profile porn star Vicky Vette, no doubt seeking a little extra publicity given the online popularity of the Peterporn celebrity sex tape scandal, has expressed her willingness to shoot a new pornographic video with Ariel and Luna Maya.

"If ARIEL PETERPORN & Luna Maya come to the USA I'll shoot another sex tape with both of them," the buxom actress tweeted. " wonder if that would be a hit in Indonesia."

Model and television gossip show host Cut Tari, meanwhile, has broken her silence over allegations that she features in a third sex tape featuring Peterpan frontman Ariel, telling reporters gathered outside her Pondok Indah home on Wednesday night that the person featured in the graphic clip was not her.

"In my opinion, everyone has a right to express an opinion and I can't ban that as that's their right," Cut Tari was quoted by Kompass.com as saying. "The point is my husband and family do not believe that the lady is me."

She said that she was shocked and disappointed about the circulation of the video but that was one of the risks - including for her husband - of being a celebrity.

Cut Tari is a former girlfriend of Ariel.

Luna and Ariel have also reportedly denied that two film clips feature themselves, though a number of Internet bloggers and at least one Internet expert have claimed otherwise.

Regardless, the trio will get their chance to argue their case before the National Police, who have taken over the investigation from Jakarta Police.

Iwan Fals Biography

2010-04-21T17:32:00.002+07:00

Virgiawan Listianto (Iwan Fals)
Vocals
Place/ Date of Birth
Jakarta/ September 3, 1961
Interests
Soccer, karate, painting

Here's why Iwan Fals matters: because boy bands don't take on dictatorships. They don't stand up when everyone else is hunkering down. They don't put to song what others are afraid to put in print. Pop stars should give a damn--when they do, remarkable transformations are possible.

When Iwan Fals held a benefit concert for flood victims in a Surabaya stadium in 2002, it was the group's biggest performance in more than a decade. Though not as prolific as he once was, his face is still visible on the mud flaps of three-wheeled pedicabs and on street-side food stalls in the smallest of villages across the Indonesian archipelago. The fame of Iwan Fals lives on -- especially in the hearts of the country's underclass -- because his message will always matter. In the crowd, 22-year-old Ali, a waiter in mud-caked sandals and pants rolled up to his knees, says he's waited since he was a child to see his idol: "He's the voice of the people. "And he has been a thorn in the side of those who would abuse their power.

In 1984, Fals was hauled in for a song that touched a nerve with the then Suharto regime. Mbak Tini (Miss Tini) told the story of a hooker who opened up a roadside coffee stall and married a truck driver hauling dirt. Problem is, the husband's name was Suharto and the wife was short and fat, not unlike the First Lady, Ibu Tien (Mrs. Tien). Fals insists that the song was not about the former First Couple. But he is as unconvincing now as he was then. Fals was confined to his hotel for two weeks while officials drew up charges ofinsulting the head of state -- which could have led to jail. In the end, he was never prosecuted, but from that point on, Fals was rebel, hero and star all rolled into one. Today, there is no Suharto around to needle. But Fals' reminders to legislators not to sleep through hearings, and calls to fight oppression have never been more relevant.

Meryl Streep Biography

2010-01-17T15:55:00.002+07:00

Name: Meryl Streep
Born: 22 June 1949 (Age: 60)
Where: Summit, New Jersey, USA
Height: 5' 6"
Awards: Won 2 Oscars, 4 Golden Globes, 1 Emmy, 1 BAFTA

When, in February, 2003, Meryl Streep was Oscar-nominated for her performance in Adaptation, she overtook Katherine Hepburn to become the most successful actress in Hollywood history. 13 nominations in 26 years (Hepburn took 48 over her 12) - incredible. Given the traditional paucity of fine roles for more mature women, this is proof positive that Streep's talent can often turn manure into gold-dust. And everyone knows it, too. Though there have been many jokes about her penchant for trying different accents ("I hahd a fahm in Ahfricaaah"), she is generally accepted to be the pre-eminent screen actress of her generation - and maybe of all generations.

She was born Mary Louise Streep on the 22nd of June, 1949, in Summit, New Jersey. Her father, Harry Streep Jr, was an executive at a pharmaceutical company, while mother Mary was a commercial artist. Mary was 35 when she had Mary Louise, her first child. Soon would come Harry III, now a choreographer married to actress Maeve Kincaid (longstanding star of the soap opera The Guiding Light), and Dana, now a bond salesman.

Young Mary Louise grew up in Summit, then the affluent New Jersey township of Bernardsville, a short distance west of Newark. Pointers to her later career (and level of professionalism) were evident from very early on. As a child, pretending to be her grandmother, she drew age-lines on her face and wore a sweater to "feel" more like her character. She made her stage debut in a school Christmas production, singing O Holy Night, and it was also telling that she delivered the song in perfect French, despite having studied the language for only a very short time. Indeed, singing was the girl's first love and she dreamt of becoming an opera star. From age 12, she trained with the renowned vocal coach Estelle Liebling.

At Bernardsville High School, she was a fine student but, to begin with, an awkward teenager - gawky and lacking confidence. Acting in school plays began to change this and, when at 15 she received a standing ovation for her part as the librarian in a production of The Music Man, she claimed she stopped feeling "dorky" - a hugely liberating moment. Many other school roles would follow, including that of Daisy-Mae in Lil' Abner. Everyone would notice this new Mary Louise when she dyed her hair blonde and switched from specs to contacts. Her popularity sky-rocketed, and she became not just a cheerleader, but Homecoming Queen.

As said, she was a bright student and an obvious talent, and won a place at the prestigious all-girl Vassar college in Poughkeepsie, New Hampshire, studying drama and English. Here she stood out once more, being awarded a much-sought-after place on the Honours Exchange Program with Dartford College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Here she'd widen her range, studying both playwrighting and set and costume design. During a trip to London where she tried to make a brief living as an actress, she'd once find herself sleeping rough in Green Park. From her uncomfortable resting-place she would have a clear view of the Ritz and vow to stay there one day. And she did.

Graduating from Vassar in 1971, she spent the summer with a travelling theatre company in Vermont, worked as a waitress at the Hotel Somerset in Somerville, then made her New York stage debut. But the ambitious Streep knew she had more to learn, and so enrolled at Yale's School of Drama where she immediately became the bright new star, eclipsing such peers as Sigourney Weaver and Wendy Wasserstein. Treating her learning as serious work, she'd usually be seen clad in overalls. Over her 3 years at Yale, she'd appear in over 30 productions with the Yale Repertory Theatre, including The Royal Pardon, Lower Depths, Edward II, The Brothers Karamazov, The Possessed and A Midsummer Night's Dream - a real all-round education. In her final year she'd audition for Murray Schisgal's All Over Town, to be directed by one of the world's biggest movie stars, Dustin Hoffman who'd just seen Lenny released. The notoriously picky Hoffman would audition 1500 people for the play, not all of them actors, and would introduce himself to Streep with a loud belch, prompting her to describe him as "an obnoxious pig".

She left Yale in 1975 with a Masters in Drama, and spent that summer with the O'Neill Playwrights Conference. Now she was ready for the big-time. Returning to New York to join Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, she made an immediate breakthrough. Papp, who described her as one of the few "true actors" he'd ever met, gave her the lead in his Lincoln Centre production of Trelawney Of The Wells. Then came his 1976 double-bill of Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full Of Cotton and Arthur Miller's A Memory Of Two Mondays. Many in the audience did not realise that the blowsy, simple-minded wife in the former and sophisticated secretary in the latter were played by the same actress. But the critics noticed and were blown away by her versatility and intensity. For 27 Wagons, she received an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Theatre World award and a Tony nomination.

1976 was a landmark year for Mary Louise (now calling herself Meryl). She proceeded to knock the critics out once more in the Shakespeare In The Park season, playing in Henry V and as Isabella in Measure For Measure. Her co-star in both was John Cazale. Though now known predominantly as foolish, fun-loving brother Fredo in The Godfather, Cazale was then set for even greater things. He was a stage star and all five of the movies he made (two Godfathers, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter) were nominated for Best Picture Oscars, 3 of them winning. He was a brilliant talent and it seemed correct that he should begin a passionate relationship with Meryl, the brightest new star in the New York stage firmament.

Meryl kept on the up. She starred on Broadway in the musical The Happy End, with John Lithgow in William Gillette's Secret Service, and won an Obie for Alice In The Palace. She also made her screen debut in the TV movie The Deadliest Season, as the wife of Michael Moriarty, playing a pro hockey star who, pressured into becoming more aggressive during games, is charged with manslaughter when an opposing player dies on the ice.

Now fame came her way. Making her big screen entrance in Julia, she impressed with a brief part as the bitchy friend of Jane Fonda's Lillian Hellman, a writer and anti-fascist activist trying to deliver funds to her battling buddy Vanessa Redgrave (in the title role) in a Hitler-ravaged Europe. The film was a big hit, winning Oscars for Redgrave and Jason Robards, but Meryl's real breakthrough came with her next release. This was Holocaust, a much harsher anti-fascist statement and a groundbreaking TV miniseries, following the conflicting fortunes of the Jewish Weiss family and German Dorfs as the Nazis rise to power.

Here James Woods gave an unforgettable performance as the Weiss first-born, an artist sent to the camps, where he's starved, brutalised and, in one profoundly moving scene, has his hands shattered - he will never create art in the same way again. Placed up against his torture are the efforts of his German-born wife (Meryl) to have him released. Wracked by her own feelings of nationalism, she does everything she can to have him freed, including sleeping with the vile camp commandant. It was a performance of massive depth and emotion, and won her a deserved Emmy.

Now she moved on to more glory with Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. Vying with Apocalypse Now as the greatest of the Vietnam movies, this saw 3 friends from a Pennsylvania steel town (Robert De Niro, John Savage and Christopher Walken) as they enjoy their last few days of liberty, then undergo terrible traumas during the conflict. Savage is physically ravaged, Walken mentally destroyed and De Niro emotionally paralysed. When De Niro returns to the town, he can't face the people, but makes contact with Walken's bereft girlfriend, Streep, and it's these scenes - Streep's quiet grief juxtaposed with De Niro's buried torment - that give the movie much of its very human heart. They would win Meryl her first Oscar nomination.

Professionally, it couldn't really have been any better. Personally, though, Meryl was suffering torment of her own. Within a couple of months of moving in with John Cazale, by then her fiance, he'd been diagnosed with bone cancer. So besotted was she that she hadn't noticed the beginnings of his deterioration but, throughout 1977, she nursed him as he fell away. He would eventually succumb in March, 1978, leaving behind that classic but all-too-short body of work, and a distraught Streep.

Meryl now threw herself into her work, starring alongside Raul Julia in the Shakespeare In the Park production of The Taming Of The Shrew. The performance would win her an important new fan in the director Karel Reisz. Onscreen, she continued her run of hot performances. In Woody Allen's Manhattan, while the ageing Allen enjoyed an affair with 17-year-old Mariel Hemingway, she played his now flamboyant and thoroughly hostile former wife, who's not only left him for another woman but written a best-selling book ridiculing their marriage and, worse, their love-life. This was followed by The Seduction Of Joe Tynan, where Alan Alda played a principled liberal senator who's gradually forced to compromise in every area of his life - Meryl appearing as the smart, pretty Southern secretary who draws him away from his family.

Schooled in the Sixties and Seventies, Streep was principled herself, demanding that both her roles and her performances be interesting and accurate. In 1978 she'd said "I'm looking forward to bigger parts in the future, but I'm not doing soft-core scripts where the character emerges in half-light, half-dressed". She would very much bring these attitudes to bear on her next role, as Dustin Hoffman's wife in Kramer vs Kramer. Interestingly, the role was originally intended for Kate Jackson, then a huge TV star after the success of The Rookies and then Charlie's Angels. But Charlie's Angels' hectic schedule meant she had to turn it down. Streep was actually called in to audition for the far smaller role of a lawyer (she'd obviously forgiven Hoffman for belching in her face during the auditions for All Over Town), but thought she was up for the Jackson role and consequently won it, playing the mother who leaves workaholic Hoffman holding the baby, then returns to seek custody just as he's managed to build a responsible relationship with his son.

In playing the part, Meryl demanded that her role be re-written (a brave move as Manhattan, The Deer Hunter and The Seduction Of Joe Tynan had not yet been released and she was not yet a star). It was important, she thought, to explain why Joanna Kramer had left her family. It was so obviously a massive step for a woman to take, her reasons needed to be clarified. It would also create sympathy for the woman, and thus add drama to the custody battle. And she fought hard for the changes, Hoffman saying later "I hated her guts, though I respect her as an actress". She was right, too. The film was a huge hit, and gained her her first Oscar, as Best Supporting Actress. Naturally, she was delighted, so delighted that during the celebration after the award ceremony, she left her precious statuette on top of a toilet.

Now everything was hunky-dory in her personal life, too. Soon after the death of Cazale, she'd engaged in a whirlwind romance with sculptor Don Gummer. Moving out of the flat she'd shared with Cazale, she'd moved into the apartment of a friend of her brother's who was travelling in Europe. That friend was Gummer. When he returned, he got on so well with Streep he asked her to stay. They'd marry in late 1978, and she'd give birth to son Henry (Harry) the next year. Mary Willa, known as Mamie, would follow in 1983, then Grace (named after an Irish ancestor) in 1986, and Louise in 1991. It was on her way back from visiting Gummer's parents for the first time that Streep would write that famous show-stopping speech in Kramer vs Kramer. Everyone was having a go at it, but her version would be chosen ahead of Dustin Hoffman's and director Robert Benton's.

As she entered the Eighties, having briefly returned to the theatre in Taken In Marriage, that performance in The Taming Of The Shrew had its effect as Karel Reisz cast her as The French Lieutenant's Woman. Written by John Fowles and scripted by Harold Pinter, this saw her in 19th Century England as a young woman waiting in vain for the return of her lover. Naturally, the town is scandalised as she pines away on the cliffs and Cobb of Lyme Regis, and all the more so when rich newcomer Jeremy Irons is captivated by this mysterious "widow". It was a richly romantic tale, made all the more intriguing by the addition of a parallel plot-line where a present day film crew are filming the story and the leads (also played by Irons and Streep) engage in an affair of their own. It was another bravura performance, and it brought yet another Oscar nomination, this time as Best Actress. The winner that year would be Katherine Hepburn for On Golden Pond, her 12th and last nominated part. 22 years later Streep would break that record.

Streep and Reisz had worked well together, but there would be ructions a few years later when Reisz ignored her request and cast Jessica Lange in his Sweet Dreams, a biopic of doomed country star Patsy Cline. Lange would be Oscar-nominated for her efforts, in the same category as Streep for Out Of Africa. Both would be beaten by Geraldine Page.

Meryl's next feature, Still Of The Night, saw her widening her scope once more. This was a psychological thriller from the Hitchcock school, and saw Meryl as another mysterious woman, but this time one who might be a killer - much to the confusion of infatuated psychiatrist Roy Scheider.

The movie wasn't particularly well-received. No matter - what followed would cement her reputation for good. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, Sophie's Choice was an involving and profoundly moving drama that saw Meryl at the very top of her form. Here she played Sophie Zawistowska living on America's East coast in 1947 with her possibly crazy lover Nathan, played by Kevin Kline. Their tempestuous relationship is viewed with fascination and some horror by their downstairs neighbour Stingo, a young Southern writer, played by Peter "Ally McBeal" MacNichol.

Streep had literally begged Pakula on her knees for the role of the concentration camp survivor whose dreadful secrets are gradually revealed, and in order to perfect her accent had learned Polish. And it paid off. Sophie's Choice entered dramatic legend and Meryl was now regarded as perhaps the finest actress of her generation, walking off with the Best Actress Oscar.

On she went to Silkwood, where she worked for the first time with director Mike Nichols. This was the true-life story of Karen Silkwood, a Texan employee at a nuclear facility, who discovers that not only are working conditions dangerous but plutonium has gone missing. Battling to reveal the truth, this feisty, courageous woman found herself first belittled by the authorities then (possibly) murdered when she tried to deliver the goods to the New York Times.

Once again, in her first real working-class part, Streep revealed her range, particularly in her exchanges with co-worker Cher. The pair would become very close, and Cher would later tell a tale of Streep's own courage. One day in New York, they were out walking together, turned a corner and saw a woman being mugged by a huge guy. Before Cher could blink, Meryl was running at the mugger, screaming at him. When Cher started running too, the fellow was panicked and took off.

Silkwood would bring another Oscar nomination, but no cigar, beginning a run of 8 consecutive defeats at the Academy Awards. Meryl moved on to Falling In Love, her first modern romance. This re-teamed her with her Deer Hunter co-star De Niro, as they played a couple of New Yorkers who meet in a bookshop, take a shine to one another and, despite their best efforts to stay true to their respective spouses, can't help but begin a relationship. It was sweet stuff, with both leads excelling as they quietly struggled to express their overwhelming emotions, but somehow it lacked spark.

Meryl immediately returned to more fraught territory. In Plenty, she was Susan Traherne, an Englishwoman who fights for the French Resistance then, post WW2, returns home to married Charles Dance. Trouble is, Traherne is a passionate woman, neurotic too, and prone to outbursts that embarrass the hell out her staid husband. Having lived fast and fully during the great conflict, she's constantly looking for an excitement, a life that no longer exists. And how she suffers for it.

It was another great performance, but not one that garnered much sympathy from viewers or the Academy, probably because Traherne was complex, fascinating but not really likeable. Yet Meryl ran the same risk with her next character, Karen Blixen in Out Of Africa. This was the true story of a brave and free-spirited Scandinavian woman who travelled to Kenya, took a husband of convenience and ran a coffee plantation on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, before financial troubles forced her to pack it in (writing as Isak Dinesen, she then became a famous author). Though the part was originally intended for Audrey Hepburn, Streep did wonders with the role, managing to be both strong and vulnerable in her dealings with the natives, the authorities, her errant husband, and her lover, game-hunter Robert Redford. And it was beautifully put together by director Sydney Pollack, who'd earlier directed Redford in another big sky epic, Jeremiah Johnson. Once more, Meryl found herself nominated by the Academy.

After two historical dramas, Streep now returned (almost) to the present day with Heartburn. Once more directed by Mike Nichols, this was a comedy-romance of sorts, written by Nora Ephron about her marriage to famous political journalist Carl Bernstein. Jack Nicholson played the Bernstein character, whose infidelity and general beastliness lead him to abandon a pregnant and vengeful Meryl. Unfortunately, being based on two such bitter and messed-up people, the movie was smart, but low on both comedy and romance.

Streep fared better with her next outing, paired again with Nicholson in Ironweed. Here they played a couple of drunks who pair up in Albany in the last years of the Depression. Nicholson is a former baseball player plagued by flashbacks, Streep matches him as a tubercular woman who won't accept she has a drink problem (and, in a return to her early stage days, she sings in a bar-room fantasy). Helmed by Hector "Pixote" Babenco, it was relentlessly grim stuff - but Streep shines when the going gets grim, and she picked up her 7th Oscar nomination.

Within a year, she had her 8th. This was for A Cry In The Dark, where she took on an Aussie accent in the real-life story of Lindy Chamberlain, a woman who, despite claiming that her young daughter was taken by a wild dog, was jailed for murder. Once again she was superb, and bravely unsympathetic. Chamberlain, a Seventh day Adventist, believed that one should reconcile oneself to the will of God, no matter what was willed, and was repressed, angry and bitter rather than openly emotional in the way the press and public expected a mother to be. This was a major reason why she became the main suspect, and why evidence that would later be easily proved as false was so happily brought against her. Streep saw and revealed all of this.

Now she was clearly established as a great thespian, to the point where people would mock her for endlessly challenging herself to master new accents ("The dingo ate my baby!" became a worldwide catchphrase). She also took flak for appearing "cold" onscreen, facing accusations that she could intellectually master a character, but never reveal her human heart. So, as if to confound her critics, she had a stab at comedy - four in a row.

First came She-Devil, based on the uncompromising feminist novel by Fay Weldon. Here Meryl played a snobbish, smarmy writer of romances, who lives a nauseatingly chintzy lifestyle, as if she were the heroine in one of her own books. But she also has a hard side, which she reveals when she cold-bloodedly steals away Ed Begley Jr, husband of Roseanne Barr, thereby unleashing Barr's burning desire for revenge.

Many were surprised by Streep's comic talents, and all the more so by her next film, Postcards From The Edge, another true-life tale based on the experiences of Carrie "Princess Leia" Fisher with her mother Debbie Reynolds. This allowed Meryl to live it up a little as the self-hating, promiscuous, alcoholic cocaine-freak battling with her attention-seeking ex-movie star mum, played by Shirley Maclaine. It was another excellent performance, which saw her singing once more, but you couldn't help feeling Streep would have been yet more impressive as the needy, overbearing mother. Nevertheless, she was Oscar-nominated again, and won an American Comedy Award.

Defending Your Life saw Meryl as a serene angel-type, capturing Albert Brooks' heart as he tried to show an after-life court how he'd shown courage during his worldly span. But she was far from serene in the final instalment of her comedy jaunt, Death Becomes Her. Here she played Madeline Ashton, an ageing screen siren who steals old college friend Goldie Hawn's plastic surgeon boyfriend, Bruce Willis. When the elixir of eternal youth comes into play, the two women engage in an almighty SFX-packed duel of spinning heads and ultraviolence (while filming, Streep actually scarred Hawn's face with a shovel - how close to disaster was THAT?).

Come 1993, it was time to get serious again, and who better to get serious with than Jeremy Irons, her French Lieutenant's Woman co-star. The pair re-united in Isabel Allende's magical-realist drama The House Of The Spirits, spanning several turbulent decades in a country not unlike Chile. Irons played a poor boy who must labour to win the hand of a rich girl, but sadly, once he's succeeded, she's poisoned. Years later, he meets his dead fiancee's younger sister (Meryl), who's taken a vow of silence, but breaks it for Irons. It should be a marriage made in heaven, yet Irons has trouble dealing with Streep's powers of clairvoyance and telekinesis , powers that affect the family for years to come.

It was a fascinating role, though the film was a tad slow. Infinitely faster was her next movie, The River Wild where, at the age of 45, she decided to try out as an action-heroine. Here she played a white-water raftswoman who's held up, along with her young son, by a gang of desperadoes led by a psychotic Kevin Bacon, and forced to take them down a particularly venomous stretch of river. It was a demanding role, but Streep took it, partly to test herself once again, and partly to show her daughters that a woman can be physically brave without strapping on a sub-machine-gun. And it nearly ended in catastrophe. At the end of the shoot, director Curtis Hanson asked Meryl to try one more take of one of the more chaotic river sequences. She said she wasn't up to it, but gave in to his persuasion, only to be swept from the raft and damn near drowned. Once on dry land again, she berated Hanson with a withering "In the future, when I say I can't do something, I think we should believe me".

Having (just) survived the action genre unscathed, Streep took on her first real romance since Out Of Africa, a decade before. This was Clint Eastwood's The Bridges Of Madison County, where a couple of grown-up siblings read their dead farmer's-wife mother's diary and discover that, back in the Sixties, she had a brief, passionate but unrequited affair with a travelling National Geographic photographer. Cut to flashback and we see the relationship unfold between Streep's misplaced Italian wife and Eastwood's gnarly-but-nice smudger, with Meryl superb as she wavers on the boundary between loyalty and desire.

It was a wonderful movie, a genuine heart-breaker, and it gave Streep her first Oscar nomination in 5 years (a long break in her case). She moved on to more high drama with Before And After, playing a New England doctor whose young son, Edward Furlong, is accused of murder. She tries to stay calm, seeking the best defence for her boy, but her efforts are undermined by her husband, Liam Neeson. Hurt and angry, his attempts at a cover-up bring yet more trouble to the family.

Before And After began a string of lower-profile dramas that offered Meryl, now approaching 50, more interesting parts. Marvin's Room saw her as the mother of an unruly Leonardo DiCaprio, struggling to keep him in check. Matters become far more complex when it's discovered he might be an appropriate bone marrow donor for her estranged sister, Diane Keaton, now suffering leukaemia. This was followed by ...First Do No Harm. This time it was her son who was sick, with epilepsy. As the hospital's treatment isn't working, Meryl does her own successful research into alternative cures, then faces a fracas with doctor Allison Janney, who will not let her take her boy home. Being a TV movie, it proved that Meryl was searching far and wide for testing parts - and it worked, earning her nominations for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe.

1998 brought Dancing At Lughnasa, about 5 unmarried sisters living in rural Ireland in the 30s. Streep played the oldest, a strict schoolteacher who holds the women together under a harsh regime of silence and discipline. But then stability is threatened when Rhys Ifans, the runaway father of one of the sister's baby, shows up, along with Michael Gambon's Father Jack, a whiskey-swilling priest from the missions and the sisters' elder brother. The movie allowed Meryl to once more reveal her feel for accents - but this had not been an easy process. A dialogue coach had been brought on board to oversee the actors' efforts, but it hadn't worked for Meryl. Having each take criticised had thoroughly unnerved her, indeed she'd begun to deconstruct her ability to act at all. Eventually, she had to have the coach removed, and returned to her own "instinctive" method of nailing the accent.

Next came another great performance in One True Thing, a profound emotional drama co-starring William Hurt and Renee Zellweger. Here Zellweger is a freelance writer who returns to the home of her famous writer father (Hurt) and housewife mother (Meryl). She's always admired her father, but not received the love from him she's always craved. Consequently she resents the affection poured on her by Streep, a problem made infinitely more complex when it's revealed that Meryl has cancer and dad wants Renee to give up her life to tend to her. All the leads were excellent here, but Meryl in particular as she discretely suffered slights from her selfish, bullying husband and deluded daughter. For the 11th time, she was Oscar nominated.

She would be again for her next picture, as Roberta Guaspari, teaching violin to Harlem street-kids in Music Of The Heart. It was a role she almost didn't play. Originally offered to Madonna, it became open only after the singer departed after "creative differences" with director Wes Craven. Left with a big hole to fill, Craven wrote a personal letter to Streep, explaining how he'd been pursuing the project for 20 years and please, please, please. Streep wisely looked past the fact the fact that Craven was best known for the likes of Scream and A Nightmare On Elm Street, and took the job on, studying violin 6 hours a day for 8 weeks in preparation.

That Streep was nominated for a part intended for Madonna must have given her some extra satisfaction. Back in the mid-Eighties, Meryl had signed up for a film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita. Much like Karel Reisz's Sweet Dreams, it would have be a perfect role for her, allowing her to show off her dramatic skills and her singing ability - thereby shattering the notion that she was always fraught in a funny accent. Sadly, the production ran out of money. When it was resurrected, Meryl was past 40 and, being as Evita Peron died at 30, she was considered too old. Meryl still fought hard to keep the part, but then Madonna came into the picture. "I can sing better than she can", complained Meryl, adding a peculiarly feisty "If Madonna gets it, I'll rip her throat out". But Madonna did get it - and her oesophagus remained intact.

Aside from providing the voice of the Blue Fairy in Steven Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, and starring alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman, her Deer Hunter boyfriend Christopher Walken and Sophie's Choice lover Kevin Kline in a Mike Nichols' Shakespeare In The Park adaptation of The Seagull, Streep would now disappear from the Silver Screen for 3 years. But this was due to delays in release rather than any self-imposed exile. When she returned in 2003, it would be in full force.

First, she returned to the cutting-edge with Spike Jonze's Adaptation. This involved the intertwining lives of an orchid thief in the South (Chris Cooper), a journalist for the New Yorker who's turning her article on the man into a book, and a screenwriter (Nicolas Cage) who's enduring writer's block in attempting to bring the book to the screen. As the real-life writer, Susan Orlean, Streep was on top form, particularly in a scene where, stoned on an orchid-based opiate, she comically tries to brush her teeth. As said, her performance would see her break Katherine Hepburn's record of 12 Oscar nominations. Co-incidentally, the real-life Orlean had years before once appeared as an extra in a movie. It was The Deer Hunter.

Many believed that Streep would also be nominated for her next picture, too. This was The Hours, filmed before Adaptation, but then delayed. With three combining stories, this saw Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf writing Mrs Dalloway, then Julianne Moore as a Fifties housewife in a loveless marriage, contemplating suicide as she read the book. Then came Meryl, in the present day as a lesbian book editor, planning a party for her dying ex-husband Ed Harris. She fights with him, but secretly agonises over whether she might somehow have found happiness with him. With the cast also including Toni Collette, Miranda Richardson and Claire Danes, it was the finest female ensemble in years. It seemed absolutely appropriate that Streep should be at their head.

After this would come 4 separate roles in Mike Nichol's 6-hour miniseries, Angels In America, concerning the onset of the AIDS virus. For the several roles she played, Streep would be rewarded with an Emmy and a Golden Globe (her fifth from 19 nominations), and there'd be more silverware when she was awarded the prestigious Stanislavsky Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2004.

That same year would see her appear on our screens in two new productions. First would come The Manchurian Candidate, Jonathan Demme's reworking of the Frank Sinatra Cold War classic. Here Liev Schreiber is being pushed for office, one of his major plus-points being that he's a war hero. Denzel Washington would play a former comrade who believes Schreiber saved his life during the Gulf War but can't quite remember how it happened. There's clearly some weird mind-stuff going on and one person who understands it all is Meryl, as Senator Eleanor Shaw, Schreiber's scene-stealing mother, in cahoots with the insidious Manchurian Global Corporation. Angela Lansbury was Oscar-nominated for her efforts in the original, but Streep would take the part several steps further, never appearing villainous, but rather finding some twisted humanity in a woman who loves her son so badly she's willing to do anything, even place implants in his brain, to have him succeed. The Golden Globe nomination she'd receive would be her 20th.

Following this, she'd return to comedy with Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events, adapted from the first three books in Daniel Handler's series. Here three rich kids, their parents killed in a fire, would be sent to live with Jim Carrey's Count Olaf, a reluctant benefactor who'd like to take their lives and their fortune. Meryl would appear as their dotty aunt Josephine, hamming it up hilariously in an insanely vertiginous hut.

2005 would bring Prime where Uma Thurman (stepping in at short notice when Sandra Bullock pulled out) played an "older woman" who falls for a 23-year-old painter. At first, her therapist Streep says that age makes no difference, but her expressions become priceless as she realises Thurman is describing raunchy sex with Streep's own son, and that the dragonish mother being berated is in fact herself.

The following year would be another big one. Having taken the lead in Brecht's Mother Courage in Central Park, alongside her Sophie's Choice co-star Kevin Kline (her Deer Hunter co-star Christopher Walken having dropped out), she'd rejoin Kline in A Prairie Home Companion. This was a Robert Altman piece based on Garrison Keillor's long-running radio show. As you'd expect from Altman, there was a welter of colliding stories as the show's theatre is closed by corporate raiders and puts on its final performance, Streep and Lily Tomlin hilariously duetting as the sole surviving members of a four-sister act (the upcoming Lindsay Lohan would appear as Streep's singing daughter). Far more successful would be The Devil Wears Prada, where out-of-towner Anne Hathaway becomes an assistant on a New York fashion magazine and suffers at the hands of monstrous editor Meryl. It was another screamer of a performance by Streep who naturally added subtlety to her high-handed, elitist and hugely controlling uber-bitch. It came as no surprise to anyone when she was Oscar-nominated for the 14th time.

Having pulled out of Sean Penn's All The King's Men, Streep would lend her voice to the animated Ant Bully (of course playing the Queen of the Ants) and appear in a wonderful short by artist Laurie Simmons, known for her photographs of miniature rooms filled with strange dolls and oversized furniture. Called The Music Of Regret, this was a 3-act musical, featuring members of the Alvin Ailey dance company, and would see Streep enjoy a romantic duet with a ventriloquist's dummy.

Next she'd move on to Dark Matter, based on the true story of Gang Lu, a brilliant Chinese exchange student in Iowa who, in 1991, passed over for an award, took a handgun and killed five of his tutors. Streep would play his mentor and patron of the university, watching helplessly as her protege unravels. Then there'd be Evening, in which Streep would head one of the great female casts of modern times, featuring Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Natasha Richardson and Streep's own daughter Mary Willa, now credited as Mamie Gummer. Based on Susan Minot's novel, this would see a dying Redgrave looking back to a single weekend when she found her one great love and had her life wrecked by terrible tragedy. Streep would play her best friend, present throughout the long years, with Gummer playing her mother in flashback.

After Evening, 2007 would bring Lions For Lambs, directed by Robert Redford, the first production from a United Artists studio relaunched by Tom Cruise and his production partner Paula Wagner. With Streep, Cruise and Redford all deferring their fees to get the film made, this would combine three stories involving US involvement in Afghanistan. In one, new congressman Cruise would discuss the conflict with Streep, playing a journalist who helped raise Cruise to his exalted position. This would be followed with more political fare in Rendition, the title referring to the CIA's practice of transferring suspected terrorists to foreign countries to be interrogated. Here Reese Witherspoon's Egyptian-American husband would be thus disappeared, with reluctant CIA agent Jake Gyllenhaal being placed in charge of his torture. A pregnant Witherspoon would attempt to find and free her husband, eventually reaching as high as Streep the shady government official behind the dodgy transportation, who browbeats Gyllenhaal and places National Security above all else.

2008 would be yet another landmark year for Streep. Her first release would be Mama Mia!, the film adaptation of the hit stage-show, where she'd play the owner of a tourist villa on a Greek island. She's never told her daughter the identity of her father, but the girl finds a diary, discovers three possible daddies and invites them all to her wedding. Streep would have in-depth discussions with all three - Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard and Pierce Brosnan - and, in one of her sunniest roles yet, join the rest of the cast in singing and dancing along to the hits of Abba. The film would be a screaming hit worldwide, taking $143 million in the US and even seeing off Titanic to set a new British box office record. As with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, people would dress up to attend showings, and sing along.

Streep would win a Golden Globe nomination for her efforts in Mama Mia! She'd go several steps further with her next picture, Doubt, based on the Tony and Pulitzer prize-winning play. Set in the Bronx in 1964, this would see her as the ideologically driven mother superior of a convent school, terrifying the kids and ruling over them with traditional severity. Coming to suspect priest Philip Seymour Hoffman of abusing a young black boy, she goes after him, their conflict mirroring the battles within the church during the Sixties. It was an extraordinarily powerful drama and would win Oscar nominations for all four of its leads - Streep, Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis. Streep would also be nominated for both a Golden Globe and a BAFTA.

Streep was busier now than she had ever been, making some six movies in 18 months. Her next would be Julie & Julia, where she would play Julia Child, the author and TV personality who introduced French cooking techniques and dishes to the States in the Sixties. The film would chart her rise, including the time she spent in Paris with her diplomat husband, a man accused by McCarthy during the Communist witch-hunts, also telling the story of a young woman in the present day (played by her Doubt co-star Amy Adams) who decided to work her way through all 524 of Child's recipes, becoming an Internet superstar in the process.

In 2004, Streep explained why she was still in such demand, even though a male-dominated industry usually puts actresses out to pasture when they reach "a certain age". Male studio bosses, she said, "don't want to see their first wife in the movies, and that's what I make them think of". Fortunately, she added, Hollywood is no longer an absolutely male-dominated industry. It was Amy Pascal at Sony Pictures, who insisted that Streep get her part in Adaptation, and Sherry Lansing at Paramount who saw her cast in The Hours and Lemony Snicket.

She may be prolific now, but for years Streep kept work to a minimum, concentrating instead on family life and charity work. As for the former, she once said that "You can get spoiled if you don't do your own ironing". Beyond this, recognising the problems of her son Henry, who attended pre-school in New York, nursery school in Texas, kindergarten in London and First Grade in Australia, she'd only film in the summers. As for charity work, she has been tireless. Coming from that Sixties/Seventies generation that believed you could and should change things, she became an activist for literacy and the environment, working on behalf of schools, mothers, forests, and the paralysed, fighting for female equality (observe the number of strong and independent women she has played), and acting at Paul Newman's camp for kids.

She may not have reached the high-earning bracket inhabited by the likes of Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz, but everyone recognises that a Meryl Streep movie will have something to say. It was quite right that she should, in 2000, have received France's Order of Arts and Letters. She is, quite simply, the most brilliant actress of her time.

Sandra Bullock Biography

2010-01-17T15:44:00.003+07:00

Name: Sandra Bullock
Born: 26 July 1964 (Age: 45)
Where: Arlington, Virginia, USA
Height: 5' 7"
Awards: 4 Golden Globe nominations

Strangely, for someone whose screen persona is usually so open and simple, it's difficult to accurately describe Sandra Bullock. Sure, she's often feted for her Meg Ryan-like girl-next-door appeal. But then, like Julia Roberts, she's also an unconventional beauty and talented comedienne. And let's not forget that her breakthrough came when she stole the show in an all-out action movie. On top of this, though deservedly famous for an irrepressibly bubbling personality, she was a student of The Method under Sanford Meisner and started off (to rave reviews) on the New York stage. Hard to pin down, is Sandra. Harder still when you know her unusually exotic background.

She was born Sandra Annette Bullock on the 26th of July, 1964, in Arlington, Virginia. Her mother, Helga, the daughter of a German rocket scientist, initially studied to be an opera singer in Nuremberg. To support her studies, she worked as a clerk, one day being called to the town's Palace of Justice (where the notorious post-WW2 trials took place). Here she was to takes letters for the new head honcho, one John Bullock. Bullock, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, was a Juilliard scholar who'd joined the Army as a runner and risen to become the boss of the military Postal Exchange for the whole of Europe.

To begin with, there was no romance between the pair. But over a three year period, with John singing at recitals (he was also a part-time voice coach), and Helga gaining renown as a dramatic soprano, they grew close and, while still in Germany, were married. John's organisational talents drew him into the Army Material Command and it was due to this work that he'd eventually become a contractor for the Pentagon, moving to Arlington and also buying a mountain property just north-west of Charlottesville. The family grew - three years after Sandra came another daughter, Gesine.

Right from the start, Sandra was a wilful and contrary child. She now recalls an incident when, at age three, with the family moving into a new home, she was directly instructed not to touch a light-bulb lying there. Her response was to karate-chop it and slice her hand horribly. It would not be the last physical injury she'd suffer as a youngster.

For an all-American girl-next-door, Sandra's formative years were thoroughly inappropriate. Much of her time was spent in Salzburg and in Nuremberg, where she lived with her aunt and grandma, attending a local school (she's fluent in German) and studying English with a tutor in the afternoons. During the opera season, she'd attend her mother's performances, sometimes appearing herself as the ubiquitous "gypsy child", or singing in the children's chorus. Also studying ballet, she quickly proved herself to be a natural performer.

At age 10, she was brought back to Arlington and attended the town's Washington-Lee High School, alma mater of both Shirley MacLaine and her younger brother Warren Beatty. She immediately had a hard time. Coming from Europe, she was different. "I was still in green velvet bell-bottoms," she explained later "when everyone else was wearing straight legs. I always had these stupid barrettes holding my hair back. I was just a couple of beats off". Of course, she was teased, and teased some more for her - if you can believe it - ugliness. Indeed, so badly hurt was she by the abuse that she vowed to never treat anyone that way. She kept it, too, her reputation for down-to-Earth decency being unparalleled in Hollywood.

There was another lesson learned, in far more dramatic circumstances. One day, out on the property near Charlottesville, sitting in the same bulldozer where, when she was 10, he gave Sandra her first beer, and close to the creek she fell into and received the scar she still carries over her right eye, John's knee slipped and hit the gear-shift. He tumbled from the 'dozer and rolled downhill, closely followed by the giant machine which ran over him, breaking his legs and several vertebrae and near-severing his left arm. For 24 hours he lay there, doing vocal exercises and yelling for help in order to keep his blood circulating, until he was discovered by a group of his students.

In hospital, he was told that his legs would have to be amputated. In fact, they weren't. After a year's tough rehabilitation, interrupted by a cardiac arrest, he was walking again. But young Sandra was marked by this near-catastrophe, becoming very protective of her family. Though Helga would die in 2000, John would remain as Sandra's semi-manager, while Gesine, who'd study to be a lawyer, would, like John, be Vice President of Sandra's production company, Fortis.

As time passed, and her body changed, Sandra's high school career became more enjoyable. She became a cheerleader and excelled at drama, though not without a fight. With her drama teacher, Mrs Filpi, she conducted a fraught relationship, often ignoring her coach and following her own path. Graduating in 1982, she'd be named Class Clown. It was also said later that she was voted Most Likely To Brighten Your Day but, as this was not the case, that was most likely just an effort to package her as everyone's favourite girl-next-door.

From Washington-Lee, Sandra moved on to East Carolina University at Greenville, majoring in Drama and supporting herself by competing successfully in dance competitions. Having stood out in a production of Three Sisters, she decided to try her luck in New York and, packing her gear and her dog into her Honda Accord, she left Greenville three credits short of a degree. In the city (where she was once held-up at gun-point), she was accepted at the renowned Neighbourhood Playhouse, studying under Meisner and bringing in the money with bar-work at a rough-house "crack den" on 43rd and Broadway (a job she obtained by falsely claiming she had plenty of experience).

Attending many an audition, she made her screen debut in the ultra-violent Hangmen, concerning feisty veterans battling with a renegade terror team within the CIA. But her first real break came the following year, 1988, with an off-Broadway performance as a sassy Southern belle in No Time Flat. For this, though the play itself was panned, she received a review glowing enough to secure her an agent. TV came immediately. First there was an appearance in the short-lived sit-com Starting From Scratch, starring Bill Dailly and Connie Stevens and boasting the tag-line "The more she gets to him, the funnier it is for you".

Next came her first major role, and an introduction to action flicks, with Bionic Showdown. This, as you may have guessed, involved Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin uniting with Bionic Woman Jaimie Somers and some young bionic friends to track down a bionic spy. Sandra made a real go of it as a bionic girl, sending adolescent pulses racing when track-running in a leotard.

This was a fairly busy time for Sandra. 1989 also brought a small part in The Preppie Murder, the true life tale of the murder of Jennifer Levin in Central Park, where cop Danny Aiello tracked down bad boy graduate William Baldwin. Then there was Who Shot Patakango?, a story of racial tensions and teens coming of age in '50s Brooklyn. And then there was Religion Inc, where Sandra played the sceptical girlfriend of an ad-man who promotes a new cult based on greed.

It was looking good - great, actually - as 1990 brought her first starring role, in the TV series Working Girl, based on the Melanie Griffith movie. Here Sandra, replacing TV vet Nancy McKeon, took Griffith's role as Tess McGill, an ambitious secretary who gets into terrible scrapes while trying to bluff her way to the top. Sadly, the show didn't last, Sandra later describing it as her "quickest flop". Her next role would not be so juicy. Jackie Collins' Chances and Lucky were turned into a miniseries following Gino Santangelo's building of a casino empire in Las Vegas, and the efforts of his daughter Lucky (played by Nicolette Sheridan) to keep it going. Miniseries queen Stephanie Beacham was part of the family, too, with Sandra appearing briefly as Maria, wife of Gino and Lucky's mother.

1990 also brought the first great love of her life, when she began filming Love Potion #9. Here Tate Donovan played a geeky biochemist who's a flop with the ladies till gypsy Anne Bancroft presents him with, yes, a love potion. Sharing it with his dumpy research scientist buddy (Sandra), the pair engage in a "scientific evaluation" of the formula. The movie would not be released for two years, and would then flop.

On-set, Sandra fell for Donovan, to the surprise of the crew. Believing her to be genuinely sweet and a genuine actress, they were shocked when she went for a guy who was "more interested in his close-ups". Nevertheless, she followed Donovan to Los Angeles and stayed with him for over three years. "The person who needed me most was always the person I was attracted to," she later explained. "My priorities were him first, me second".

In Los Angeles, work came slowly, Sandra being forced to take odd jobs to get by (she is, in fact, very handy around a bit of DIY). Eventually, though, some small parts did come. There was Who Do I Gotta Kill?, where a writer, obsessed with conspiracy theories, loses his agent, then his girlfriend (Sandra, who dumps him during sex because he can't think of a reason she should stay with him),and finally ends up working for the Mob. Then there was When The Party's Over, a drama concerning friendship, sex and success in the Nineties. Here Sandra played a young painter who shares a house with two girls and a gay fellow. All is well till infidelity invites terminal jealousy.

By 1993, things were rapidly changing. Sandra won a short but vital role in a remake of The Vanishing, where she played a girl whose kidnapping by psycho Jeff Bridges provokes boyfriend Keifer Sutherland into years of painful searching. Then there were two roles she won in an incredible two hour period. In Peter Bogdanovich's The Thing Called Love she was wannabe country singer Linda Lue Linden, seeking fame in Nashville along with Samantha Mathis, Dermot Mulroney and River Phoenix. For her part, she would write and perform the song Heaven Knocking On The Door. More problematically, she'd also break her nose (something she'd also done years earlier when Gesine accidentally elbowed her when opening the garage door). For a week, she'd be filmed only from the back and side.

Things were worse with poor River Phoenix, though. Now with drug trouble he was fading fast, and this would be his final completed film before his death outside LA's Viper Rooms. His girlfriend, Mathis, would naturally be devastated and Sandra would comfort her, the pair becoming fast friends.

The other part was in Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, a tale of fading machismo and undying dreams of love and happiness, where Robert Duvall and Richard Harris played two lonely oldsters in a Florida retirement home, struggling with the passing of time. Sandra played a waitress who lets the shy Duvall flirt with her. Also involved was fellow Washington-Lee alumnus, Shirley MacLaine.

1993 also saw the release of another, lesser picture - the Roger Corman-produced Fire On The Amazon - where she was involved with activists and Indians, fighting deforestation in the Amazon Basin. Deeply unhappy with sex scenes, Sandra was called upon to make out with co-star Craig Sheffer. He'd later reveal that, in order to get through the scene, they drank tequila, Sandra occasionally going outside to vomit, before returning to the shoot. Sandra was particularly reluctant to appear nude onscreen. In fact, she made the production company sign a contract stating which parts of her could not be shown, and even stuck duct tape over her nipples to ensure they would not be seen. Eventually, she would attempt to block the film's release - though this was perhaps an effort at quality control.

But that year did bring a far happier (and more important) experience. An executive at Warner Brothers had noted her efforts in The Vanishing and recommended her to producer Joel Silver, then desperately seeking an actress to step into Demolition Man - Lori Petty having been discharged after just a few days. So, suddenly Sandra was there next to Sylvester Stallone, playing his new partner once he's been brought out of cryo-freeze to battle his former nemesis, arch-villain Wesley Snipes. Also involved were Benjamin Bratt, as a fellow cop, and MTV comic Denis Leary. Later, Leary would reveal that, though he didn't know Sandra, one day she knocked on his trailer door to say there were some guys in her trailer who'd really like to meet him. On arrival, he found that it was Motley Crue. Sandra, having no idea who they were, was busy making them peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches.

Though essentially a special effects super-blast, Demolition Man did reveal Sandra's own comedic talents. And vitally her performance so impressed Silver that he in turn recommended her to director Jan De Bont, then casting for his debut feature, to be called Speed. Here maverick cop Keanu Reeves had to save a bus-load of innocents from Dennis Hopper, a criminal maniac who's put a bomb onboard, a bomb that will blow if the bus drops below 50mph - and Sandra's driving. Everyone told Sandra not to do it, she'd just be "the girl". The producers were most unhappy with an unknown in the part, especially an unknown who wasn't blonde with big breasts, but Jan De Bont insisted. The result was a searing mega-hit. Sandra was made.

Joel Schumacher was now very keen to get Sandra involved in his Batman Forever, but she'd already signed up for her first lead role, in While You Were Sleeping, Demi Moore having dropped out after a dispute over her fee. It wasn't going to be easy. The role called for relentless good humour, and Sandra was badly damaged by a split with Tate Donovan (who'd himself later be dumped by Jennifer Aniston). Still, she pushed herself and it came off. In the movie, she played a ticket seller on the Chicago tube who falls for a commuter (Peter Gallagher) she sees every day. When he falls onto the rails, she saves him and, while he's in a brief coma, his family become convinced that she's his fiancee. All the family, that is, apart from suspicious brother Bill Pullman - and there's no one better at being suspicious than Pullman. Then, of course, Gallagher awakes.

The movie was a big smash, grossing over $200 million. And Sandra once again charmed the cast and crew. At one point during filming, director John Turtelaub noticed that sweets were disappearing from his own personal drawer. He asked a prop-guy to put a lock on it, but the treats kept going. Sandra, he discovered, had buddied up to the workman and obtained her own key.

Next came another hit with The Net. Here she played Angela Bennett, a computer geek who, having stumbled upon some rather sensitive information, finds that all of her records have been erased and replaced with those of a criminal. Someone, quite clearly, is trying to get her - but who? It was another strong role, and one she won with sheer personality. Director Irwin Winkler later recalled her first coming to his office "wearing overalls, the chunkiest shoes you ever saw, and a baseball cap turned backwards. Most actresses would wear the highest heels, the shortest skirt and lowest blouse to meet the director, but that's not the way she is".

Once again, she'd find love on-set, this time with grip Don Padilla. Sadly, it would not last, the relationship not withstanding the pressure once While You Were Sleeping and The Net made Sandra one of the biggest stars of 1995 (the former actually saw her Golden Globe nominated).

After The Net, she was back with Leary in Stolen Hearts. Here he played a petty crim who, doing that one last job, steals a Matisse and takes off for Nova Scotia, where he hopes to flog the merchandise and patch things up with his girlfriend, played by Sandra. The couple then try to impress their rich neighbours while avoiding both gangsters and the FBI. It wasn't great, but it did lead Sandra into a run of big roles and bigger pay-days. She was now paid well over $10 million per movie.

Next Joel Schumacher finally got his woman, signing Sandra up for A Time To Kill. Here Matthew McConaughey played a young lawyer in a KKK-riddled Southern town, who must defend Samuel L. Jackson, a man who's killed the men who raped and murdered his young daughter. Sandra played a rich Northerner who asks to help McConaughey for no pay and, when turned down, resourcefully turns up information that will help him fight smarmy prosecutor Kevin Spacey.

Another hit, and yet more fun to make. Aside from getting on brilliantly with McConaughey (there were constant rumours of romance), Sandra also bonded with Schumacher. Indeed, on Joel's birthday, shortly before shooting began, she had onset carpenters knock up a huge tiered cake. When it was presented to the director, she burst out of it, decked in balloons and a fluorescent bikini, and mooned at him, his age daubed on her buttocks.

Now came more Hemingway with Richard Attenborough's In Love And War, based on the author's WW1 experiences. Here Chris O'Donnell played Hemingway when he was a young ambulance driver, badly injured and falling for his nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky (Sandra, in her first romantic-dramatic lead). Then came Speed 2, with Sandra's character this time taking a cruise break with cop boyfriend Jason Patric. Unfortunately, evil computer genius Willem Dafoe begins to run the boat from his keyboard and the terror begins again.

As with the original Speed, everyone told Sandra not to do it. This time, perhaps she should have listened. Not only was it a flop, but she was almost killed while filming. Fatigued while in the water, only Patric's rapid actions saved her from being shredded.

Speed 2 was followed by Forest Whitaker's Hope Floats, where Sandra played a young mother who returns to her small Texas hometown after a bitter split from her husband. Trouble is, everyone knows her situation as her best friend has announced on national TV that she's been sleeping with Sandra's hubbie. Everyone treats her horribly, except Harry Connick Jr who's always held a torch for her - but can she bring herself to love him back?

As a properly trained actress, and being well aware of actresses' problems in Hollywood, Sandra had decided to take a hand in her own destiny by forming Fortis Films and producing her own movies. Hope Floats was the first of these. She also took a step into the unknown by writing and directing a 30-minute short called Making Sandwiches. Here she and McConaughey, well, made sandwiches while Eric Roberts presented the weather on their TV, dressed in drag and taking off his sister. Very strange, very funny, very Sandra.

It was time for more big-budget comedy, and now Sandra took on Practical Magic. Here she and Nicole Kidman played the Owens sisters, doomed by a family curse to have their lovers die young. Eventually, they must turn to witchy aunts Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest and learn some of that old family magic. It was boisterous fun, and led to another huge hit when Sandra provided the voice of Miriam in the animated biblical saga The Prince Of Egypt.

Next she turned to Forces Of Nature, the first of several projects with comedy writer Marc Lawrence. Here Ben Affleck is on his way to his wedding but, when the plane suffers a slight accident on take-off, he has to hitch a lift with an eccentric and ridiculously endearing Sandra. Sandra would see Affleck for a while, as she would Heath Ledger, singer Bob Schneider and TV host Johnny Knoxville.

This was followed by another of her own productions, an odd little number called Gun Shy. Here Liam Neeson played an undercover agent pursuing the Mob, who's so stressed by his job that he suffers from flatulence. Hence he visits a gastroenterologist (Sandra, as "the enema queen") whom he begins to date. It was a bizarre entertainment, and a drama-comedy much like Sandra's next outing, 28 Days, where she played a columnist who, drunk on her sister's wedding day, crashes her car and is sent into rehab. Here, refusing to accept she's got probs, she's helped to see more clearly by her fellow patients.

Now came another hit with the Lawrence-penned Miss Congeniality, where she was FBI agent Gracie Hart, who goes undercover at a beauty pageant to foil some nasty bombers. It was another superb comic performance (she was once more Golden Globe nominated), with Benjamin Bratt, as in Demolition Man, turning up as a fellow cop. After this came Murder By Numbers, where she and Ben Chaplin were homicide detectives chasing two smart-arsed and murderous young students (shades of The Preppie Murder here). Then there was Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood, where she played Siddalee Walker, a young novelist who feuds with her Southern mother (Ellen Burstyn) until her mum's old gang kidnap her and reveal mum's flamboyant past. Ashley Judd, who'd played Matthew McConaughey's wife in A Time To Kill, appeared as the young Burstyn.

Next there was more Lawrence with Two Weeks Notice, another rom-com with Sandra as a smart but neurotic lawyer, representing a charming but uncontrollable property developer Hugh Grant. She wants to save a beautiful old building, he wants to knock it down. She hates him but, in the grand old rom-com tradition, when she's replaced by Alicia Witt she realises that she really loves him. The movie, one of Bullock's own Fortis productions, was another feel-good hit.

Her personal life now was fairly complex. She'd split from actor Ryan Gosling, 15 years her junior, who'd she'd met on the set of Murder By Numbers. Then 2004 saw her dating the tattooed Jesse James, owner of the celebrity motorbike manufacturer West Coast Chopper and star of his own TV show. Most saw the relationship as a disaster waiting to happen, but Bullock's joie de vivre and James' daredevil nature made for a fine coupling and the pair would marry in July, 2005. Happiness beckoned, Bullock's situation being further improved by the end of a long-running court battle. In 1997 she'd contracted one Benny Daneshjou to build her a 10,000 square feet mansion at Lake Austin, Texas, but the work done had been extremely shoddy and Bullock had never been able to move in. Now she was awarded $7 million in damages. And, being Sandra, she near-immediately gave $1 million away to the Red Cross after the Asian tsunami disaster (she'd donated the same amount after 9/11), her generosity starting a flood of huge celebrity donations.

Onscreen, 2004 was a slow year, her only appearance being a brief showing in the Oscar-winning Crash, written and directed by Paul Haggis. This was an ensemble piece, intertwining several different stories, each concerning some aspect of racial relationships in the US. Bullock, playing the wife of DA Brendan Fraser, would slip into angry paranoia after the couple are car-jacked. Interestingly, Bullock had come close to starring in Haggis's previous piece, Million Dollar Baby. Set to star as the trailer-park girl seeking escape through boxing, for years she'd struggled to find finance for the project then, as she took Miss Congeniality 2, the producers handed it to Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank, who famously won an Oscar for her efforts.

2005 would see something of a comeback. First came Loverboy, directed by Kevin Bacon, in which she'd taken an uncredited and unpaid cameo (as had Matt Dillon, who'd just appeared with Sandra in Crash). This had Bacon's wife Kyra Sedgwick as a mother so badly neglected as a kid she smothers her own son. Sandra would pop up in flashback as a neighbourhood mum idealized by the young Sedgwick. Having pulled out of Prime due to script problems (the lead went instead to Uma Thurman), now she enjoyed success with that sequel to Miss Congeniality. Here, her Gracie Hart was now a media celebrity, concentrating on talk shows and book promotions rather than FBI work. When the winner of the original movie's beauty pageant and its compere (Heather Burns and William Shatner respectively) are kidnapped in Las Vegas, she wants to go undercover to save them but is hindered by her bosses who don't want to lose their new mascot and don't think she's up the the job anyway.

After this would come a long-anticipated reunion with Keanu Reeves in The Lake House, a remake of the 2000 South Korean movie Siworae. This would be a sweet romance where doctor Bullock would live in a glass house on stilts over a lake. Moving out, she leaves a note for the next occupier (architect Reeves) who in turn contacts her at the address supplied. He thinks there's been some kind of mistake. And there has - he thinks it's 2004, she thinks it's 2006. As these troubled souls continue to communicate via a magic mail-box, they gradually fall in love.

Following this would come Douglas McGrath's Infamous, a fascinating tale exploring Truman Capote's relationship with the killers when investigating the famous Clutter family murders for his renowned book In Cold Blood. Bullock would play Harper Lee, a childhood neighbour of Capote's from Alabama who would work on the case as his research assistant (this was 1959 - the next year she would release her own novel, To Kill A Mockingbird). Though based on a different book and enjoying both a higher budget and starrier cast-list, the movie would inevitably suffer from being beaten to the punch by the recent Capote which had seen Philip Seymour Hoffman take the Best Actor Oscar. Bullock would move on to Premonition, where her husband would die in a car crash only to appear alive again the next day. Believing herself to have been forewarned of tragedy, she must now stop the vision becoming a reality.

Having also produced George Lopez, a successful sit-com concerning a Chicano family, and in 2005 received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, Sandra was on the up-and-up. The $14 million she was offered for Miss Congeniality 2 hoisted her into Hollywood's upper female echelons, alongside Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz. But, hanging around her homes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Austin, Texas, she remains almost wholly untouched by fame, preferring instead to indulge her interests in friends, rock-climbing (she was once saved by boy scouts when her rope caught in a crevice) and extra crispy KFC. As she says herself: "I have no desire to maintain a lifestyle. I'm a horrible celebrity. If I go out in public I dress like a pig".

With equal popularity amongst men and women, and her production company running smoothly, we can expect Sandra Bullock to move towards the high drama in which she was schooled. But there will always be comedy - in that, she has few peers.

Sandra Bullock Kisses Meryl Streep!

2010-01-17T15:33:00.002+07:00

Meryl Streep, winner of two Oscars and the current record-holder for the most nominations faces off with Sandra Bullock, who just made history for bringing a film past the $200 million mark. Both Streep and Bullock are box office champs this year, which kind of shatters the idea that women over 40 can’t own the box office.

They can’t own the box office? Oh yes they can. The Golden Globes on Sunday will not clear things up at all. While Streep will likely win in her category (musical/comedy) Bullock could win in drama, though she will have some competition with Carey Mulligan. Cute little Carey Mulligan – what a year she’s had.

Somehow, though, even with Gabby Sidibe in the race, and Helen Mirren potentially, it is down to Bullock versus Streep. Both actresses play real people. Both actresses are American and both play American heroes. One legend (Streep) plays another legend (Julia Child). One small town firecracker (Sandra Bullock) plays another (Leanne Tuohy). Both real life people are admirable and beloved. Julia Child is a towering icon who forever changed the way people, especially American women, cook. It had to be someone of Streep formidable stature to play such a woman and Streep nailed it.

Two problems for Streep. The first is that she has been kind of taken for granted as a longtime nominee but never an out-and-out winner. Not only does she has to give the best performance of the year — in some ways, she has to top her best performances, like Sophie’s Choice or Heartburn or A Cry in the Dark. The second is that her part in Julia & Julia is only half of the movie. The other half is the unbearable sequences involving Amy Adams as Julie.

By contrast, Sandra Bullock carries her entire film, for the most part. But Bullock’s film The Blind Side is more problematic than Julie & Julia, which was decently reviewed and was directed by Nora Ephron. The Blind Side is sort of a phenomenon. If you’re talking straight performance and ability, Streep wins hands down. But Sandra Bullock has never been close to Oscar territory before and Streep has. This will come into play. Either way, it’s one of the more exciting races in the game this year.

Billy Corgan Biography

2010-01-16T16:16:00.002+07:00

William Patrick "Billy Corgan, Jr. (born March 17, 1967 in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A) is an American vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter best known for his work in the the now-disbanded alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins. The Pumpkins were one of alternative rock's biggest acts, known for their complex layered sound, Corgan's scathing guitar and self-described whiny vocals, and making use of elaborate and evocative fantasy imagery.

The Smashing Pumpkins produced five major albums, including the widely-acclaimed and commercially successful albums Siamese Dream (1993) and the follow-up double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995).

Early years
Corgan moved from Chicago to St. Petersburg, Florida in 1985 with his first major band, The Marked, named for the noticeable birthmarks of Billy and Ron Roesing, the drummer. The band lasted for around nine months and disbanded, with Billy returning to Chicago to live with his father.

While working at a record store there, he met up with guitarist James Iha through a friend. He then met bassist D'Arcy Wretzky at a local show and soon formed The Smashing Pumpkins. The trio began to play together at local clubs with only a drum machine for percussion. The band tried to book a show at the Cabaret Metro, a notable Chicago venue. Metro owner Joe Shanahan refused to let the band play until they found a live drummer. The band was introduced to jazz fusion drummer Jimmy Chamberlin by a mutual friend. Chamberlain didn't align with the band at first, but thought they had potential--thus he joined the group. The Metro show on April 10, 1988 was the band's first show with the full lineup. The Pumpkins continued to have a close relationship with the venue, playing new tracks there frequently and playing the band's final show at the Metro more than a decade later. The new band fused diverse threads such as psychedelic rock and heavy metal into a distinctive sound on their inaugural album, Gish (1991).

Popular success
The Pumpkins signed to major-label subsidized Caroline Records to record Siamese Dream. The Pumpkins became known for their elaborate production techniques, layering dozens of different tracks over one another with a wide variety of effects. Siamese Dream's "Soma" uses over 40 guitar tracks alone. The band became known for internal drama during this period, with Corgan frequently characterized in the music press as a control freak who reportedly went so far as to unilaterally erase other band members' studio tracks and rerecord his own performances over them. The reality of the situation was Corgan had developed a deep depression and worked overtime for both Gish and Siamese Dream, recording some of the guitar and bass tracks for the former and almost all for the latter. Guitarist Iha and bassist Wretzky were losing interest in the band during that time period due to a messy break-up. Corgan even went on record saying if Siamese Dream didn't sell well, he would break up the band. The album was well received by critics, and the songs "Today" and "Disarm" became smash hits, with the accompanying music videos receiving heavy airplay on MTV.

Their 1995 followup effort, the massive 2 disc set Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, was even more wildly successful, spawning a string of hit singles and eventually a box set (The Aeroplane Flies High, 1996) of songs recorded during the Mellon Collie sessions which were cut from the album. The album was nominated for seven Grammy awards that year and would eventually sell several million copies, making it the best selling double album of all time. With the expanded resources now at their disposal, production values became even more elaborate, and the band branched out beyond their hard rock roots, featuring, for example, dense orchestral accompaniment on "Tonight, Tonight", ethereal pieces leaning towards rock-electronica ("1979"), and a soft piano intro track. The album also included a number of more traditional metal-driven guitar-based tracks, such as the first single, "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", and "Zero".

During the album's tour, the band was plagued by Chamberlin's heroin addiction. On July 12, 1996, Chamberlin and touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin overdosed in a hotel room. Chamberlin survived, but Melvoin did not. The Pumpkins were forced to fire their disgraced drummer. They completed the tour with Filter drummer Matt Walker and Frogs keyboardist Dennis Flemion, but the band missed the intense energy that Chamberlin's drumming provided.

Later works
Their next effort, 1998's Adore, was undertaken with drum machines and studio drummers in place of Chamberlin, and consisted mostly of subdued material. Corgan's mother Martha passed away from cancer during the making of the record, and in the absence of Chamberlin—Corgan's longtime creative foil—the proceedings took on a halting, confused tone. Adore earned high praise from some critics, but other critics and most fans thought the band strayed too far from its strengths.

Chamberlin was reunited with the band in 1999, bolstering its confidence but not returning it to commercial prominence. 2000 saw MACHINA/The Machines of God, a concept album on which the band deliberately played to their public image; critics were again divided. An accompanying bonus album, MACHINA II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music, was distributed among fans and released for free in MP3 format on the Internet. After the recording of MACHINA, bassist D'Arcy quit the band and was replaced by former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur. The Smashing Pumpkins split up later in 2000 and played their last show on December 2 of that year at the Metro in Chicago.

In 2001, Corgan formed Zwan with Chamberlin and guitarists Matt Sweeney and David Pajo, with former A Perfect Circle bassist Paz Lenchantin joining in 2002. Zwan's focus on sunny, melodic pop-rock surprised fans and critics, and its album Mary Star of the Sea (written in and inspired by Key West, Florida), garnered generally positive reviews. In March 2003, Corgan and Chamberlin performed with Jazz vocalist Kurt Elling at "The Waltz", an annual benefit for homeless and abused teenagers. Together, they performed a version of Jimi Hendrix's "Freedom". During an interview with WGN-9 on September 15 that same year, Corgan announced that Zwan had officially disbanded.

On February 17, 2004, Corgan posted a bitter message on his blog in which he blamed guitarist James Iha for the sudden breakup of The Smashing Pumpkins four years prior. He also referred to bassist D'arcy Wretzky as "a mean spirited drug addict." In another recent post, Corgan insulted his former Zwan bandmates, claiming they had been obnoxiously self-conscious about their "indie cred" to the point of hurting those around them. Poking fun at their indie stance, he called them "poseurs". Sounding both enraged and hurt, he declared them to be "filthy", opportunistic, and selfish.

Even through two band break-ups, Corgan and Chamberlin remain very good friends to this day. Corgan has made a guest appearance on Chamberlin's solo album Life Begins Again under the name The Jimmy Chamberlin Complex.

Corgan published Blinking with Fists, a book of poetry, in late 2004. Blinking with Fists debuted on the New York Times' Best Seller list. It was also the best-selling poetry book in the United States in its first week of release. Corgan is currently pursuing a solo career and is to have his first solo album "TheFutureEmbrace" released on 20th June 2005 internationally and a day later in the US.

In addition to performing, Corgan has produced albums for Ric Ocasek, Hole, The Frogs, and Catherine. He wrote the song "Eye" for the movie Lost Highway (1997) and has produced three soundtracks for the movies Ransom (1996), Stigmata (1999) and Spun (2002). He has performed vocals and guitar for New Order and Marianne Faithfull. Billy was also featured on Blindside's 2004 album About a Burning Fire, in the song Hooray, It's LA.

Abdurrahman Wahid Biography - Story of Abdurrahman Wahid

2009-12-31T18:35:00.006+07:00

Abdurrahman Wahid, born 7 September 1940 – 30 December 2009, colloquially known as About this sound Gus Dur, was an Indonesian Muslim religious and political leader who served as the President of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001. The long-time president of the Nahdlatul Ulama and the founder of the National Awakening Party (PKB), Wahid was the first elected president of Indonesia after the resignation of Suharto in 1998.

Like many Indonesian names, "Abdurrahman Wahid" does not contain a family name. The name "Wahid" is patronymic.

Abdurrahman ad-Dakhil Wahid was born on the fourth day of the eighth month of the Islamic calendar in 1940 in Jombang, East Java to Abdul Wahid Hasyim and Siti Solichah. This led to a belief that he was born on 4 August; instead, using the Islamic calendar to mark his birth date meant that he was actually born on 4 Sha'aban, equivalent to 7 September 1940. He was named after Abd ar-Rahman I of the Umayyad Caliphate who brought Islam to Spain and was thus nicknamed "ad-Dakhil" ("the conqueror"). His name is stylized in the traditional Arabic naming system as "Abdurrahman, son of Wahid".

He was the firstborn out of his five siblings, and Wahid was born into a very prestigious family in the East Java Muslim community. His paternal grandfather, Hasyim Asy'ari was the founder of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) while his maternal grandfather, Bisri Syansuri was the first Muslim educator to introduce classes for women. Wahid's father, Wahid Hasyim, was involved in the Nationalist Movement and would go on to be Indonesia's first Minister of Religious Affairs.

In 1944, Wahid moved from Jombang to Jakarta where his father was involved with the Consultative Council of Indonesian Muslims (Masyumi), an organization established by the Imperial Japanese Army which occupied Indonesia at the time. After the Indonesian Declaration of Independence on 17 August 1945, Wahid moved back to Jombang and remained there during the fight for independence from the Netherlands during the Indonesian National Revolution. At the end of the war in 1949, Wahid moved to Jakarta as his father had received appointment as Minister of Religious Affairs. Wahid went about his education in Jakarta, going to KRIS Primary School before moving to Matraman Perwari Primary School. Wahid was also encouraged to read non-Muslim books, magazines, and newspapers by his father to further broaden his horizons. Wahid stayed in Jakarta with his family even after his father's removal as Minister of Religious Affairs in 1952. In April 1953, Wahid's father died after being involved in a car crash.

In 1954, Wahid began Junior High School. That year, he failed to graduate to the next year and was forced to repeat. His mother then made the decision to send Wahid to Yogyakarta to continue his education. In 1957, after graduating from Junior High School, Wahid moved to Magelang to begin Muslim Education at Pesantren (Muslim School) Tegalrejo. He completed the pesantren's course in two years instead of the usual four. In 1959, Wahid moved back to Jombang to Pesantren Tambakberas. There, while continuing his own education, Wahid also received his first job as a teacher and later on as headmaster of a madrasah affiliated with the Pesantren. Wahid also found employment as a journalist for magazines such as Horizon and Majalah Budaya Jaya.

Overseas education
In 1963, Wahid received a scholarship from the Ministry of Religious Affairs to study at Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. He left for Egypt in November 1963. Unable to provide evidence to certify that he spoke Arabic, Wahid was told when arriving that he would have to take a remedial class in the language before enrolling at the University's Higher Institute for Islamic and Arabic studies.

Instead of attending classes, Wahid spent 1964 enjoying life in Egypt; watching European and American movies as well indulging in his hobby of watching football. Wahid was also involved with the Association of Indonesian Students and became a journalist for the association's magazine. After passing the remedial Arabic examination, he finally began studies at the Higher Institute for Islamic and Arabic Studies in 1965, but was disappointed. He had already studied many of the texts offered at the Institute in Java and disapproved of the rote learning method used by the University.

In Egypt, Wahid found employment with the Indonesian Embassy. It was during his stint with the Embassy that G30S PKI happened. With Kostrad Commander, Major General Suharto taking control of the situation in Jakarta, a Communist crackdown was initiated. The Indonesian Embassy in Egypt was ordered to conduct an investigation on university students reporting on their political views. This order was passed to Wahid, who was charged with writing the reports.

Wahid's displeasure at the method of education and his work post-G30S distracted him from his studies. Wahid sought and received another scholarship at the University of Baghdad and moved to Iraq. There Wahid continued his involvement with the Association of Indonesian Students as well as with writing journalistic pieces to be read in Indonesia.

After completing his education at the University of Baghdad in 1970, Wahid went to the Netherlands to continue his education. Wahid wanted to attend Leiden University but was disappointed as there was little recognition for the studies that he had done at the University of Baghdad. From the Netherlands, Wahid went to Germany and France before going back to Indonesia in 1971.

career
Wahid returned to Jakarta expecting that in a year's time, he would be abroad again to study at McGill University in Canada. He kept himself busy by joining the Institute for Economic and Social Research, Education and Information (LP3ES), an organization which consisted of intellectuals with progressive Muslims and social-democratic views. LP3ES established a magazine called Prisma and Wahid became one of the main contributors to the magazine. Whilst working as a contributor for LP3ES, Wahid also conducted tours to pesantrens and madrasahs all around Java. It was a time when pesantren were desperate to gain state funding by adopting state-endorsed curricula and Wahid was concerned that the traditional values of the pesantren were being damaged because of this change. Wahid was also concerned with the poverty of the pesantren which he saw during his tours. At the same time as they were encouraging pesantren to adopt state-endorsed curricula, the Government was also encouraging pesantren as agents for change and to help assist the Government in its economic development of Indonesia. It was at this time that Wahid finally decided to drop plans for overseas studies in favor of developing the pesantren.

Wahid continued his career as a journalist, writing for magazine Tempo and Kompas newspaper. His articles were well-received and he began to develop a reputation as a social commentator. Wahid's popularity was such that at this time, he was invited along to give lectures and seminars, forcing him to travel back and forth between Jakarta and Jombang, where he now lived with his family.

Despite having a successful career up to that point, Wahid still found it hard to make ends meet and he worked to earn extra income by selling peanuts and delivering ice to be used for his wife's Es Lilin (popsicle) business. In 1974, Wahid found extra employment in Jombang as a Muslim Legal Studies teacher at Pesantren Tambakberas and soon developed a good reputation. A year later, Wahid added to his workload as a Teacher of Kitab Al Hikam, a classical text of sufism.

In 1977, Wahid joined the Hasyim Asyari University as Dean of the Faculty of Islamic Beliefs and Practices. Once again, Wahid excelled in his job and the University wanted to Wahid to teach extra subjects such as pedagogy, sharia, and missiology. However, his excellence caused some resentment from within the ranks of university and Wahid was blocked from teaching the subjects. Whilst undertaking all these ventures Wahid also regularly delivered speeches during Ramadan to the Muslim community in Jombang.

Leader of Nahdlatul Ulama
Wahid's family background meant that sooner or later, he would be asked to play an active role in the running of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). This ran contrary to Wahid's aspirations of becoming a public intellectual and he had twice rejected offers to join the NU Religious Advisory Council. Nevertheless, Wahid finally chose to join the Council when his own grandfather, Bisri Syansuri gave him the third offer. In taking this job, Wahid also made the decision to move from Jombang to Jakarta and to permanently reside there. As a member of the Religious Advisory Council, Wahid envisioned himself as a reformer of NU.

At this time, Wahid also had his first political experience. In the lead-up to the 1982 Legislative Elections, Wahid campaigned for the United Development Party (PPP), an Islamist Party which was formed as a result of a merger of four Islamist parties including NU. Wahid recalled that the Government actively disrupted PPP's campaigns by arresting people like himself. However, Wahid was always able to secure his release, having developed connections in high places with the likes of General Benny Moerdani.

Reforming NU
By this time, many viewed NU as an organization in stagnation. After careful discussion, the Religious Advisory Council finally formed a Team of Seven (which included Wahid) to tackle the issues of reform and to help revitalize NU. For some members of NU, reform in the organization involved a change of leadership. On 2 May 1982, a group of high-ranking NU officials met with NU Chairman Idham Chalid and asked for his resignation. Idham, who had guided NU in the transition from Sukarno to Suharto resisted at first but bowed down to pressure. On 6 May 1982, Wahid heard of Idham's decision to resign and approached him saying that the demands to resign were unconstitutional. With urging from Wahid, Idham withdrew his resignation and Wahid, together with the Team of Seven was able to negotiate a compromise between Idham and those who had asked for his resignation.

In 1983, Suharto was re-elected to a fourth term as President by the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) and began taking steps to establish Pancasila as the State Ideology. From June 1983 to October 1983, Wahid became part of a team which was commissioned to prepare NU's response to this issue. Wahid consulted texts such as the Quran and Sunnah for justification and finally, in October 1983, concluded that NU should accept Pancasila as the State Ideology. To further revitalize NU, Wahid was also successful in securing its withdrawal from PPP and Party politics. This was done so that, NU can focus on social matters instead of hampering itself by being involved in politics.

Election to Chairmanship and first term as Chairman
Wahid's reforms had made him extremely popular within the ranks of NU. By the time of the 1984 National Congress, many began to state their intentions to nominate Wahid as the new Chairman of NU. Wahid accepted the nomination, provided that he had the power to choose who would be on his leadership team. Wahid was elected as the new Chairman of NU during the National Congress. However, his stipulation of choosing his own team was not honored. The last day of the Congress had begun with Wahid's list of team members being approved by high-ranking NU officials including outgoing Chairman Idham. Wahid had gone to the Committee in charge of running the Congress and handed in his list which was to be announced later. However, the Committee in question was against Idham and announced a totally different list of people. Wahid was outraged but was pressured to accept the changes made.

Wahid's ascendancy to the NU Chairmanship was seen positively by Suharto and his New Order regime. Wahid's acceptance of Pancasila along with his moderate image won him favor among Government ranks. In 1985, Suharto made Wahid a Pancasila indoctrinator. In 1987, Wahid showed further support for the regime by criticizing PPP in the lead-up to the 1987 Legislative Elections and further strengthening Suharto's Golkar Party. His reward came in the form of a membership of the MPR. Although he was viewed with favor by the regime, Wahid criticised the Government over the Kedung Ombo Dam project that was funded by the World Bank. Although this somewhat soured the cordial relationships that Wahid had with the Government, Suharto was still keen on getting political support from NU.

During his first term as Chairman of NU, Wahid focused on reform of the pesantren education system and was successful in increasing the quality of pesantren education system so that it can match up with secular schools. In 1987, Wahid also set up study groups in Probolinggo, East Java to provide a forum for like-minded individuals within NU to discuss and provide interpretations to Muslim texts. Critics accused Wahid of wishing to replace the Arabic Muslim greeting of "assalamualaikum" with the secular greeting of "selamat pagi", which means good morning in Indonesian.

Second term as Chairman and opposing the New Order
Wahid was re-elected to a second term as Chairman of NU at the 1989 National Congress. By this time, Suharto, embroiled in a political battle with ABRI began to ingratiate himself with the Muslim constituency so as to win their support. This venture reached a turning point in December 1990 with the formation of the Union of Indonesian Intellectual Muslims (ICMI). This organization was backed by Suharto, Chaired by BJ Habibie and included Muslim intellectuals such as Amien Rais and Nurcholish Madjid as its members. In 1991, various members of ICMI asked Wahid to join. Wahid declined because he thought that ICMI encouraged sectarianism and that it was just a means by Suharto to remain powerful. In 1991, Wahid countered ICMI by forming the Democracy Forum, an organization which contained of 45 intellectuals from various religious and social communities. The organization was treated with credibility by the Government and broke up meetings held by the Democracy Forum as the 1992 Legislative Elections approached.

In March 1992, Wahid planned to have a Great Assembly to celebrate the 66th anniversary of the founding of NU and to reiterate the organization's support for Pancasila. Wahid had planned for the event to be attended by at least one million NU members. However, Suharto moved to block the event, ordering policemen to turn back busloads of NU members as they arrived in Jakarta. Nevertheless, the event managed to attract 200,000 attendants. After the event, Wahid wrote a letter of protest to Suharto saying that NU had not been given a chance to display a brand of Islam that is open, fair, and tolerant. During his second term as Chairman of NU, Wahid's liberal ideas had begun to turn many supporters sour. As Chairman, Wahid continued to push for inter-faith dialogue and even accepted an invitation to visit Israel in October 1994.

Third term as Chairman and the lead-up to Reformasi
As the 1994 National Congress approached, Wahid nominated himself for a third term as Chairman. Hearing this, Suharto wanted to make sure that Wahid was not elected. In the weeks leading up to the Congress, Suharto's supporters, such as Habibie and Harmoko campaigned against Wahid's re-election. When it came time for the National Congress, the site for the Congress was tightly guarded by ABRI in an act of intimidation. Despite this, and attempts to bribe NU members to vote against him, Wahid came through and was re-elected as NU Chairman for a third term. During this term, Wahid began to move closer towards a political alliance with Megawati Sukarnoputri from the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI). Capitalizing on her father's legacy, Megawati had a lot of popularity and intended to put political and moral pressure on Suharto's regime. Wahid advised Megawati to be cautious and to avoid being nominated as President during the 1998 MPR General Session. Megawati ignored this advice and paid the price in July 1996 when her PDI headquarters were taken over by supporters of Government-backed PDI Chairman, Suryadi.

Seeing what happened to Megawati, Wahid thought that his best option now was to retreat politically by getting himself back in favor with the Government. In November 1996, Wahid and Suharto met for the first time since Wahid's re-election to the NU Chairmanship and this was followed over the next few months by meetings with various Government people who in 1994 had attempted to block Wahid's re-election. At the same time however, Wahid kept his options for reform open and in December 1996, had a meeting with Amien Rais, an ICMI member who had grown critical of the Regime.

July 1997 saw the beginning of the Asian Financial Crisis. Suharto began to lose control of the situation and just as he was being pushed to step up the reform movement with Megawati and Amien, Wahid suffered a stroke in January 1998. From his bed in the hospital, Wahid continued to see the situation worsen with Suharto's re-election to a seventh term as President and the student protests which would turn into riots in May 1998 after the shooting of six students at Trisakti University. On 19 May 1998, Wahid, together with eight prominent leaders from the Muslim community were summoned to Suharto's residence. Suharto presented the concept of a Reform Committee which he had begun to propose at the time. All nine rejected Suharto's offer to join the Reform Committee. Wahid maintained a more moderate stance with Suharto and called on the protesting to stop to see if Suharto was going to implement his promise. This displeased Amien who was the most vocal out of Suharto's opposition at this time. Nevertheless, there was no stopping Suharto's fall and on 21 May 1998, he announced his resignation. Vice President Habibie now ascended to the Presidency.

Formation of PKB and the Ciganjur statement
One of the immediate effects of Suharto's fall was the formation of new political parties. Under Suharto's regime, political parties had been limited to just three; Golkar, PPP, and PDI. Now with his fall, new political parties were formed, the most prominent of which was Amien's National Mandate Party (PAN) and Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P). In June 1998, many from within the NU community began pressuring Wahid to form a new political party. Wahid did not warm up to the idea immediately, thinking that this will result in a political party which only catered to one religion and not willing to overrule his own decision to take NU out of politics. By July 1998 however, he began to warm up to the idea, thinking that establishing a political party was the only way to challenge the organizationally strong Golkar in an election. With that in mind, Wahid approved of the formation of PKB and became the Chairman of its Advisory Council with Matori Abdul Djalil as Party Chairman. Although it was clearly dominated by NU members, Wahid promoted PKB as a party that is non-sectarian and open to all members of society.

As opposition to the Government, Wahid, together with Megawati and Amien were willing to adopt a moderate stance towards Habibie's Government; preferring instead to wait for the 1999 Legislative Elections. Nevertheless, in November 1998, in a meeting at his residence in the Jakarta suburb of Ciganjur, Wahid, together with Megawati, Amien, and Sultan Hamengkubuwono X reiterated their commitment to Reform. On 7 February 1999, PKB officially declared Wahid as their Presidential candidate.

1999 elections and MPR General Session
In June 1999, Wahid's PKB entered the legislative elections. PKB won 12% of the votes with Megawati's PDI–P winning the legislative elections with 33% of the votes. With her party decisively winning the Legislative Elections, Megawati expected to win the Presidency against Habibie at the MPR General Session. However, PDI-P did not have complete majority and formed a loose alliance with PKB. In July however, Amien Rais would form the Central Axis, a coalition of Muslim parties. The Central Axis then began to consider nominating Wahid as a third candidate in the Presidential race and PKB's commitment towards PDI-P began to waver.

In October 1999, the MPR convened and Wahid threw his support behind Amien who was elected as the Chairman of MPR. On 7 October 1999, Amien and the Central Axis, who now had PKB on their side, officially nominated Wahid as a Presidential Candidate. On 19 October 1999, the MPR rejected Habibie's accountability speech and Habibie withdrew himself from the Presidential race. In the hours that followed, Akbar Tanjung, Chairman of Golkar and Head of the People's Representative Council (DPR) made it clear that Golkar would support Wahid in his bid for the Presidency. On 20 October 1999, the MPR convened and began electing for a new President. Wahid was then elected as Indonesia's fourth President with 373 votes to Megawati's 313 votes.

Displeased that their candidate had not won the Presidency, Megawati's supporters began to riot and Wahid realized that for this to stop, Megawati had to be elected as Vice President. After convincing General Wiranto not to compete in the Vice Presidential elections and getting the PKB to support Megawati for this election, Wahid was successful in convincing the demoralized Megawati to compete. On the 21 October 1999, Megawati competed in the Vice Presidential election and defeated PPP's Hamzah Haz.

1999
Wahid's first Cabinet, dubbed the National Unity Cabinet, was a Coalition Cabinet which consisted of members of various political parties: PDI-P, PKB, Golkar, PPP, PAN, and Justice Party (PK). Non-partisans and the TNI (Formerly known as ABRI) were also represented in the Cabinet. Wahid then went on to make two administrative reforms. The first administrative reform was to abolish the Ministry of Information, the Suharto regime's main weapon in controlling the media while the second administrative reform was to disband the Ministry of Welfare which had become corrupt and extortionist under the Suharto regime.

In November, Wahid made his first overseas trip, visiting ASEAN member countries, Japan, United States of America, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan. He followed this up in December by a visit to the People's Republic of China.

After only a month in the National Unity Cabinet, Coordinating Minister of People's Welfare Hamzah Haz announced his resignation in November. There was suspicion that the resignation was brought about by Wahid's allegation that certain members of his Cabinet were involved in corruption while he was still in America. Others suggested that Hamzah's resignation was because of displeasure towards Wahid's conciliatory stance towards Israel.

Wahid's plan in Aceh was to give it a referendum. However, this referendum would be to decide on various modes of autonomy rather than to decide on independence like in East Timor. Wahid also wanted to adopt a softer stance towards Aceh by having less military personnel on the ground. On 30 December, Wahid visited Jayapura in the Province which was then known as Irian Jaya. During his visit, Wahid was successful in convincing West Papuan leaders that he was a force for change and even encouraged the use of the name Papua.

2000
In January, Wahid made another overseas trip to Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum and visited Saudi Arabia on the way back to Indonesia. In February, Wahid made another trip to Europe visiting the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. On the way back to Europe, Wahid also visited India, South Korea, Thailand, and Brunei. March saw Wahid visit East Timor. In April, Wahid visited South Africa en route to the G77 summit in Cuba before returning via Mexico City and Hong Kong. In June, Wahid once again visited America, Japan, and France with Iran, Pakistan, and Egypt as the new additions to the list of countries which he had visited.

Cabinet dismissals
While he was travelling to Europe in February, Wahid began asking for the resignation of General Wiranto, who held the position of Coordinating Minister of Politics and Security. Wahid saw Wiranto both as an obstacle to his planned reform of the Military as well as being a liability to his Government with his alleged human rights abuses in East Timor. When Wahid arrived back in Jakarta, Wiranto talked to him and seemed successful in convincing Wahid not to replace him. However, Wahid would change his mind and ask for his resignation. In April 2000, Wahid dismissed Minister of Industry and Trade Jusuf Kalla and Minister of State Owned Enterprises Laksamana Sukardi. The explanation that he gave was that the two were involved in corruption, although he never gave evidence to back it up. This move soured Wahid's relations with Golkar and PDI-P.

Aceh
In March 2000, Wahid's Government began to open negotiations with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Two months later, in May, the Government signed a memorandum of understanding with GAM to last until the beginning of 2001, by which time both signatories would have breached the agreement.

Other overtures toward reconciliation
In March 2000, Wahid suggested that the 1966 Provisional People's Consultative Assembly (MPRS) resolution on the banning of Marxism-Leninism be lifted.
Wahid also moved to establish commercial relations with Israel, which aroused the ire of many Indonesian Muslim groups. This was one issue that arose in the briefing given to a Palestinian parliamentary delegation in 2000 by Riddhi Awad, their ambassador to Indonesia. Another issue was Wahid's membership in the Shimon Peres Foundation. Both Wahid and his foreign minister Alwi Shihab took offense at the inaccurate portrayals of the Indonesian President, and Alwi called for the replacement of Awad. However, Nurcholish Madjid pointed out that Wahid's personal neutrality toward the Israel-Palestine conflict should yield to the feelings of the "majority" of Indonesians, who support Palestine.

Relationship with TNI
When he ascended to the Presidency, one of Wahid's goals was to reform the military and to take it out of its dominant socio-political role. In this venture, Wahid found an ally in Agus Wirahadikusumah who he made Commander of Kostrad in March. In July, Agus began uncovering a scandal involving Dharma Putra, a foundation with affiliations to Kostrad. Through Megawati, TNI members began pressuring Wahid to remove Agus. Wahid gave in to the pressure but then planned to have Agus appointed as the Army Chief of Staff to which TNI top brass responded by threatening to retire and Wahid once again bowed down to pressure.

Wahid's relationship with the TNI deteriorated even further when in July it was revealed that Laskar Jihad had arrived in Maluku and was being armed by the TNI. Laskar Jihad, a radical Islamic militia had earlier in the year planned to go to Maluku and assist Muslims there in their communal conflict with the Christians. Wahid had ordered TNI to block Laskar Jihad from going to Maluku, but nevertheless they still made it to Maluku and they were then being armed with what turned out to be TNI weapons.

Buloggate and Bruneigate
2000 saw Wahid embroiled in two scandals which would damage his Presidency. In May, the State Logistics Agency (BULOG) reported that US$4 million were missing from its cash reserve. The missing cash was then attributed to Wahid's own masseur who had claimed that Wahid sent him to Bulog to collect the cash. Although the money was returned, Wahid's opponents took the chance of accusing him of being involved in the scandal and of being aware of what his masseur was up to. At the same time, Wahid was also accused of keeping US$2 million for himself. The money was a donation by the Sultan of Brunei to provide assistance in Aceh. However, Wahid failed to account for the money.

2000 MPR Annual Session and Cabinet reshuffle
As the 2000 MPR Annual Session approached, Wahid's popularity with the people were still at a high and politically, allies such as Megawati, Akbar, and Amien were still willing to support Wahid despite the sacking of the ministers and the scandals which he had been involved in. At the same time however, they were asking questions of Wahid. At the 2000 MPR Annual Session, Wahid delivered a speech which was well received by a majority of the MPR members. During the speech, Wahid recognized his weakness as an administrator and said that he was going to delegate the day-to-day running of the Government to a Senior Minister. The MPR members agreed but proposed that Megawati should be the one to receive the task from the President. At first the MPR planned to have this proposal adopted as a resolution but a Presidential Decision was seen as enough. On the 23rd August, Wahid announced a new Cabinet despite Megawati's insistence that the announcement was delayed. Megawati showed her displeasure by not showing up for the Cabinet announcement. The new Cabinet was smaller and consisted of more non-partisans. There were no Golkar members in this Cabinet.

Regional unrest
In September, Wahid declared martial law in Maluku as the condition there continued to deteriorate. By now, it was evident that Laskar Jihad were being assisted by TNI members and it was also apparent that they were financed by Fuad Bawazier, the last Minister of Finance to have served under Suharto. During the same month, the West Papuans raised their Morning Star flag. Wahid's response was to allow the West Papuans to do this provided that the Morning Star flag was placed lower than the Indonesian flag. For this, he was severely criticized by Megawati and Akbar. On 24 December 2000, there was Terrorist Attack directed against churches in Jakarta and in eight cities across Indonesia.

Gathering political opposition
By the end of 2000, there were many within the political elite who were disillusioned with Wahid. The most obvious person who showed this disillusion was Amien who showed regret at supporting Wahid to the Presidency the previous year. Amien also attempted to rally opposition by encouraging Megawati and Akbar to flex their political muscles. Megawati surprisingly defended Wahid whilst Akbar preferred to wait for the 2004 Legislative Elections. At the end of November, 151 DPR members signed a petition calling for the impeachment of Wahid.

2001 and removal from power
In January, Wahid made the announcement that Chinese New Year was to become an optional holiday. Wahid followed this up in February by lifting the ban on the display of Chinese characters and the importations of Chinese publication. In February, Wahid visited Northern Africa as well as Saudi Arabia to undertake the hajj pilgrimage. Wahid made his last overseas visit in June 2001 when he visited Australia.

At a meeting with university rectors on 27 January 2001, Wahid commented on the possibility of Indonesia descending into anarchy. Wahid then made the suggestion that he may be forced to dissolve the DPR if that happened. Although the meeting was off-the-record, it caused quite a stir and added to the fuel of the movement against him. On 1 February, the DPR met to issue a memorandum against Wahid. Two memorandums constitute an MPR Special Session where the impeachment and removal of a President would be legal. The vote was overwhelmingly for the memorandum and PKB members could only walk out in protest. The memorandum caused widespread protests by NU members. In East Java, NU members went around to Golkar's regional offices and thrashed it. In Jakarta, Wahid's opposition began accusing him of encouraging the protests. Wahid denied it and went to talk to the protesters at the town of Pasuruan; encouraging them to get off the streets. Nevertheless, NU protesters continued to show their support for Wahid and in April, made the announcement that they were ready to defend and die for the President.

In March, Wahid tried to counter the opposition by moving against dissidents within his own Cabinet. Minister of Justice Yusril Ihza Mahendra was removed for making public his demands for the President's resignation while Minister of Forestry Nurmahmudi Ismail was also removed under the suspicion of chanelling his department's funds to Wahid's opposition. In response to this, Megawati began to distance herself and did not show up for the inauguration of the Ministers' replacement. On 30 April, the DPR issued a second memorandum and on the next day called for an MPR Special Session to be held on 1 August.

By July, Wahid grew desperate and ordered Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Coordinating Minister for Politics and Security to declare a State of Emergency. Yudhoyono refused and Wahid removed him from his position. Finally on 20 July, Amien declared that the MPR Special Session will be brought forward to 23 July. TNI, having had a bad relationship with Wahid through his tenure as President, stationed 40,000 troops in Jakarta and placed tanks with their turrets pointing at the Presidential Palace in a show of force. On 23 July, the MPR unanimously voted to impeach Wahid and to replace him with Megawati as President. Wahid continued to insist that he was the President and stayed for some days in the Presidential Palace, but eventually left the residence on 25 July for a trip overseas to the United States for health treatments.

Schism within the PKB
After his impeachment, Wahid turned his eyes to Matori Abdul Djalil, who was the Chairman of PKB. Before the MPR Special Session, it was agreed upon that no PKB members would attend as a sign of solidarity. However, Matori insisted on attending because he was a Vice-Chairman of the MPR and participated in the impeachment process. Using his position as Chairman of the Advisory Council, Wahid sacked Matori as Chairman of PKB on 15 August 2001 and suspended him from Party activities before stripping Matori of Party membership in November. On 14 January 2002, Matori held a Special National Congress attended by his supporters in PKB. The Special National Congress re-elected him to the position of PKB Chairman. Wahid countered this by holding his own PKB National Congress on 17 January, a day after Matori's Congress ended The National Congress re-elected Wahid to the position of Chairman of the Advisory Council and elected Alwi Shihab as its Chairman. Wahid's PKB would be known as PKB Kuningan whilst Matori's PKB would be known as PKB Batutulis.

2004 Legislative and Presidential elections
In April 2004, PKB participated in the 2004 Legislative Elections, winning 10.6% of the votes. For the 2004 Presidential Elections, in which the people will directly elect the President, PKB nominated Wahid as a Presidential Candidate. As a Presidential Candidate was required Wahid to go on a medical check-up before he is officially enlisted by the General Elections Commission (KPU) as a Presidential candidate. While other candidates such as Yudhoyono and Wiranto passed their respective tests, Wahid failed to do so and KPU refused to enlist him as a Presidential Candidate. Wahid then threw his support behind his brother, Solahuddin, who was the running mate of Wiranto. On 5 July 2004, Wiranto and Solahuddin were knocked out of the race after coming third to the pairs of Yudhoyono-Kalla and Megawati-Muzadi. For the run-off elections, held on 20 September 2004, Wahid declared himself as part of White Group (Golput) which meant that he will not be using his right to vote.

Opposition to Yudhoyono Government
In August 2005, Wahid became one of the leaders of a political coalition called the United Awakened Archipelago (Koalisi Nusantara Bangkit Bersatu). Along with Try Sutrisno, Wiranto, Akbar Tanjung, and Megawati, this coalition criticized the policies of the Yudhoyono Government, specifically about the withdrawal of fuel subsidies which will bring the prices of fuel up.

Other activities
Gus Dur is the inspiration behind the Wahid Institute, a Jakarta-based nonprofit organization led by his daughter Yenni Wahid. He also serves as patron, member of the board of directors and senior advisor to LibForAll ("Liberty for All") Foundation, whose mission is to reduce religious extremism and discredit terrorism worldwide. Among numerous other writings, he is the author of a seminal article published in the Wall Street Journal on December 30, 2005 ("Right Islam vs. Wrong Islam") in which he called on "people of good will of every faith and nation" to unite to defeat the ideology of religious hatred that underlies and animates terrorism. Wahid discussed his suspicions regarding the involvement of the Indonesian government and the TNI (Indonesia's armed forces) in the terrorist bombings on Bali, in an interview in the documentary Inside Indonesia's War on Terrorism which as aired by SBS Dateline on October 12, 2005.

In September 2006, Wahid said that he was ready to contest the 2009 Presidential Election He confirmed this in March 2008, at a rally of his National Awakening Party (PKB) in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan. Gus Dur and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, former Justice of the US Supreme Court stated their concerns about recent developments in Malaysia that seem aimed at defaming opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and threatening him with imprisonment in a manner which is reminiscent of the campaign to defame him in 1998. They stated there are plausible motives for some to manufacture a false case against him. They also mentioned that Anwar last year brought evidence to a royal commission that enabled it to conclude that there had been improper influence exerted on judicial appointments and more recently he brought forward evidence against the current attorney-general and the current inspector-general of police for the perversion of justice in his own prosecution in 1998–99.

Religious views
Wahid said:
All religions insist on peace. From this we might think that the religious struggle for peace is simple ... but it is not. The deep problem is that people use religion wrongly in pursuit of victory and triumph. This sad fact then leads to conflict with people who have different beliefs.
In a 2002 interview with Foreign Correspondent, Wahid explained his respect for Israel and posed a challenging "correction" to be addressed by his fellow Muslims:
Israel believes in God. While we have a diplomatic relationship and recognising diplomatically China and Russia, which are atheist states, then it's strange that we don't acknowledge Israel. This is the thing that we have to correct within Islam.

Personal life
Wahid was married to Sinta Nuriyah with whom he had four daughters: Alissa Qotrunnada Munawaroh, Zannuba Arifah Chafsoh (colloquially known as Yenny), Annita Hayatunnufus, and Inayah Wulandari.

Death
Wahid personally asked to be brought to visit Rembang and Jombang (both situated in East Java) despite his bad health condition. He had previously been admitted into a hospital just before he left Jakarta. During his visit, his health condition worsened and Wahid was admitted into one of the hospitals in Jombang on 24 December 2009. Following his return the next day, he was admitted into Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital in Central Jakarta in order to undergo a dialysis. He underwent dental surgery on 28 December after complaining of toothache. Wahid died on 30 December at approximately 6:45 p.m. local time (UTC+7) after his condition deteriorated because of complications from kidney disorders, heart disease and diabetes. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited the hospital prior to his death. Government will hold a state funeral for Wahid on 31 December, and flags will be flown at half-staff for seven days. He is buried next to the graves of his grandfather and parents at his birthplace, Jombang, East Java.

source: wikipedia

Indonesians bury popular former President Abdurrahman Wahid

2009-12-31T18:00:00.004+07:00

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Thousands of mourners thronged roads Thursday in Indonesia to say farewell to late President Abdurrahman Wahid, a beloved, one-eyed cleric who reached out to religious minorities in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation.

Wahid, who ruled for nearly two years of tumult as Indonesia embarked on a path to democracy in 1999 after three decades of dictatorship, died in a hospital Wednesday. He was 69.

A memorial service was led by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono before the burial in Wahid's East Java hometown of Jombang, where about 10,000 supporters prayed over his remains, which were wrapped in white sheets.

The televised service began a week of national mourning during which flags will be flown at half-staff. Some official New Year's Eve celebrations were canceled.

There was a massive outpouring of sentiment for a man whose open style, impromptu joke telling and naps during his own speeches endeared him to the masses. Weeping admirers lit candles and incense and said prayers at vigils held at mosques, churches, temples, schools and landmarks.

Wahid, known fondly by his nickname Gus Dur, was a democratic reformer and proponent of moderate Islam who ultimately was unable to implement his ambitious ideas amid the financial and political chaos that dominated the vast island state of 235 million people during his presidency.

A White House statement said Wahid was "a pivotal figure" in Indonesia's transition to free government who "will be remembered for his commitment to democratic principles, inclusive politics, and religious tolerance."

During his short term, from October 1999 to July 2001, Wahid led a broad coalition of unity but was eventually impeached after firing Yudhoyono, then a Cabinet minister, for refusing to declare a state of emergency when the army positioned tanks facing the Presidential Palace.

Wahid had been in the intensive care unit of Ciptomangunkusumo Hospital in Jakarta for the past week.

The former president died during surgery to remove a blood clot in his heart, said professor Yusuf Misbach, head of his medical team. Wahid's condition had deteriorated because of complications with diabetes and kidney failure, he said.

Wahid had struggled with illness for years and was confined to a wheelchair. Nearly blind, he also suffered serious kidney problems and diabetes.

Presidential spokesman Julian Pasha noted Wahid's widespread popularity, saying "we lost one of our greatest figures, who was very much loved by people from all walks of life."

Article By: Niniek Karmini

President Abdurrahman Wahid Died at age 69

2009-12-30T19:34:00.002+07:00

Indonesia's former president Abdurrahman Wahid, better known as Gus Dur, died in a Jakarta hospital at 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday. He was 69 years old.

The former president had been undergoing regular dialysis for some time. He was hospitalized last week after traveling in East Java.

Gus Dur served as president from 1999-2001 during the turbulent years following Suharto's resignation in 1998.

Channel 4 prepares for its final Celebrity Big Brother

2009-12-30T17:56:00.002+07:00

It was once one of Channel 4's most popular shows, and also its most controversial. Now the broadcaster is preparing to say goodbye to Celebrity Big Brother, which will conclude with its longest run - 27 days - when it launches on Sunday.

The famous Big Brother house has been given a makeover for the show's seventh and final season, with a look.. [read full story]

Nick Jonas Biography

2009-12-30T17:05:00.003+07:00

Nick Jonas was born Nicholas Jerry Jonas on September 16, 1992. He's a singer, songwriter, and actor - one of the three brothers in the Jonas Brothers pop rock boy band. The Jonas Brothers group started as a singing career for Nick, but producers signed all three of them when they heard them. Kevin Jonas, Joseph Jonas and Nick Jonas are the stars of the Disney series Jonas where they play themselves.

Born in Dallas Texas, Nick Jonas was originally discovered by singing in a barber shop where his mom was getting a haircut. He was referred to a show business manager, and began singing on Broadway at the age of 7. Nick acted in several Broadway plays at a tender age.

Nick was diagnosed with Type I diabetes at age 13 and wears an insulin pump to help him keep a normal blood sugar level. He has partnered with four different charities to raise awareness and funds for diabetes.

In Summer 2007, Nick Jonas and brothers Kevin and Joe guest starred in an episode of Hannah Montana. Close to 11 million people watched the episode, breaking cable records. The Jonas Brothers filmed a movie, Camp Rock, where they played characters in a band - a real stretch we know.

By May 2008, Nick Jonas, Kevin Jonas, and Joe Jonas were starring in their own Disney reality series Jonas Brothers: Living the Dream. It documented the lives of the Jonas Brothers during their tour Look Me in the Eyes. They are now starring in the Disney series called Jonas, where they play the Lucases, a family pop band that is trying to live a normal life. Sounds a bit like Hannah Montana.

Their second album Jonas Brothers was released in Summer 2007 and sold over three million copies. The Jonas Brothers' third album, A Little Bit Longer was released in August 2008. It sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Is Jonas Music taking over the world?

Nick Jonas Fast Facts:
Discovered as a child while singing at a hair salon.
Performed in his first Broadway show, A Christmas Carol: The Musical, at age 8.
Signed as a solo act with Columbia Records at age 11.
Drew inspiration from his struggles with Type 1 diabetes when writing the song "A Little Bit Longer."
Wears a purity ring symbolizing abstinence until marriage.

Nick Jonas Relationships:
Denise Jonas - Mother
Frankie Jonas - Brother
Joe Jonas - Brother
Kevin Jonas - Brother
Kevin Jonas Sr. - Father
Miley Cyrus - Ex-significant Other
Selena Gomez - Ex-significant Other

Black Eyed Peas Tour Dates 2010 The E.N.D. World Tour 2010

2009-12-29T15:39:00.004+07:00

The Black Eyed Peas are here tonight in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Event Center with their first of two concerts this week of The E.N.D. World Tour. Then, It's off to hosting New Year's Eve at LAX nightclub in the Luxor Hotel. http://www.blackeyedpeas.com

One of the original three Black Eyed Peas, Will.I.am, is set to host an event Jan 1. at Pure nightclub in Caesar
s Palace. http://www.purelv.com

The group will be in Atlanta in February 4,Miami February 6, February 23 In Washington, D.C., and February 24th in NYC at Madision Garden to name just a few of their upcoming concert dates.

The latest news is that Black Eyed Peas' first Dublin concert date ever, May 2, 2010 sold out within 20 minutes. We're sure that fans are hoping they'll consider adding another date.

Ticket info can be found at the Live Nation Web site.

The E.N.D. World Tour 2010 – North American Tour Dates
Feb. 4 – Atlanta, GA – Philips Arena
Feb. 6 – Miami, FL – American Airlines Arena
Feb. 9 – Jacksonville, FL – Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena
Feb. 10 – Tampa, FL – St. Pete Times Forum
Feb. 12 – Nashville, TN – Nashville Arena
Feb. 13 – Birmingham, AL – BJCC Arena
Feb. 16 – Columbus, OH – Schottenstein Center
Feb. 17 – Lexington, KY – Rupp Arena
Feb. 19 – Raleigh, NC – RBC Center
Feb. 20 – Charlotte, NC – Time Warner Cable Arena
Feb. 23 – Washington, DC – Verizon Center
Feb. 24 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden
Feb. 26 – Boston, MA – TD Garden
March 1 – Uniondale, NY – Nassau Coliseum
March 3 – Philadelphia, PA – Wachovia Center
March 4 – Pittsburgh, PA – Mellon Arena
March 6 – Toronto, Ontario, Canada – Air Canada Centre
March 9 – Detroit, MI – The Palace
March 11 – Milwaukee, WI – Bradley Center
March 13 – Chicago, IL – United Center
March 19 – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center
March 20 – Tulsa, OK – BOK Center
March 22 – St. Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center
March 24 – Kansas City, MO – Sprint Center
March 25 – Des Moines, IA – Wells Fargo Arena
March 27 – Denver, CO – Pepsi Center
March 29 – Los Angeles, CA – Staples Center
March 31 – Glendale, AZ – Jobing.com Arena
April 2 – San Jose, CA – HP Pavilion
April 7 – Sacramento, CA – ARCO Arena
April 10 – Tacoma, WA – Tacoma Dome
April 11 – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada – GM Place

Manny Pacquiao Biography

2009-12-27T14:51:00.004+07:00

Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao (pronounced /ˈpækjaʊ/; born December 17, 1978), known as Manny "Pac-Man" Pacquiao is a Filipino professional boxer, part-time actor and recording artist. He is the former WBC Lightweight world champion, WBC Super Featherweight world champion, IBF Super Bantamweight world champion, and WBC Flyweight world champion. He has also held the Ring Magazine titles for Featherweight, Super Featherweight, and Light Welterweight divisions.

For his achievements, he became the first Filipino and Asian boxer to win five world titles in five different weight divisions. He is currently the IBO and Ring Magazine Light Welterweight champion and is rated by the Ring Magazine as the #1 pound-for-pound boxer in the world. He is also the first boxer to win the lineal championship in four different weight classes.

Personal life
Pacquiao was born in Kibawe, Bukidnon, Mindanao and currently resides in his home town General Santos City, South Cotabato, Philippines. He is married to Jinkee Pacquiao and they have four children.

Early career
Pacquiao started his professional boxing career at the age of 16 at 106 lbs (Light Flyweight). His early fights took place in small local venues and were shown on Vintage Sports' Blow by Blow, an evening boxing show. His professional debut was a 4-round bout against Edmund "Enting" Ignacio on January 22, 1995, which Pacquiao won via decision, becoming an instant star of the program. Close friend Mark Penaflorida's death in 1994 spurred the young Pacquiao to pursue a professional boxing career.

His weight increased from 106 to 113 lbs before losing in his 12th bout against Rustico Torrecampo via a third-round knockout (KO). Pacquiao had not made the weight. So he was forced to use heavier gloves than Torrecampo, thereby putting Pacquiao at a disadvantage.

Shortly after the Torrecampo fight, Pacquiao settled at 112 lbs, winning the WBC Flyweight title over Chatchai Sasakul in the eighth round only to lose it in his second defense against Medgoen Singsurat, also known as Medgoen 3K Battery, via a third-round knockout on a bout held at Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand. Technically, Pacquiao lost the belt at the scales as he surpassed the weight limit of 112 lbs (51 kg).

Following his loss to Singsurat, Pacquiao gained weight anew. This time, Pacquiao went to the Super Bantamweight division of 122 lbs (55 kg), where he picked up the WBC International Super Bantamweight title. He defended the title five times before his chance for a world title fight came.

Pacquiao's big break came on June 23, 2001, against IBF Super Bantamweight champion Lehlohonolo Ledwaba. Pacquiao stepped into the fight as a late replacement and won the fight by technical knockout to become the IBF Super Bantamweight champion on a bout held at MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada. He defended this title five times and fought to a sixth-round draw against Agapito Sánchez in a bout that was stopped early after Pacquiao received 2 headbutts.

Pacquiao's rise

1st fight with Barrera
Pacquiao went on to defend his title four times with expert training from Freddie Roach at the Wild Card Gym, improving his hand speed and mental preparation before the match that many consider to have defined his career, a bout against Marco Antonio Barrera. Pacquiao, moving up in weight and in his first fight ever in the Featherweight division, brought his power with him and defeated Barrera via a TKO in the 11th round at the Alamodome, San Antonio, Texas. Although this fight was not recognized as a title fight by any sanctioning bodies, Pacquiao was recognized as world champion by Ring Magazine after his victory, and he held that title until relinquishing it in 2005.

1st fight with Márquez
Only 6 months removed from his win over Barrera, Pacquiao went on to challenge another respected Mexican counterpuncher, Juan Manuel Márquez, then holder of the World Boxing Association (WBA) and International Boxing Federation (IBF) Featherweight titles. The fight held at the MGM Grand ended in a controversial draw after he knocked down Márquez three times in the first round but lost most of the latter rounds. One of the judges later admitted to making an error in the scorecards because he scored the first round as "10-7" in favor of Pacquiao instead of the standard "10-6" for a three-knockdown round.

1st fight with Morales
Pacquiao once again moved up another division from 126 to 130 lbs to fight another Mexican legend, three-time division champion Érik Morales on March 19, 2005, at the MGM Grand Las Vegas. However, this time around, at his first fight in the Super Featherweight division, Pacquiao lost the 12-round match by a unanimous decision from the judges.

WBC International Super Featherweight title
On September 10, 2005, Manny Pacquiao fought Héctor Velázquez at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. He knocked Velázquez out in 6 rounds to capture the WBC International Super Featherweight title. On the same day, his rival, Erik Morales, fought against Zahir Raheem. However, Morales fought a lackluster performance, losing to Raheem via unanimous decision.

2nd bout with Morales
The much-anticipated rematch between Pacquiao and Morales happened on January 21, 2006 at Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas. In that fight, Morales escaped being knocked down twice, one during the 2nd round by holding on to the ropes and the other on the 6th round by falling on the referee's body. Pacquiao eventually knocked Morales out in the 10th round, dealing him the first knockout loss in his boxing career.

Oscar Larios
On July 2, 2006, Pacquiao defeated Óscar Larios, a two-time Super Bantamweight champion who had moved up two weight divisions in order to face Pacquiao. Despite his camp's big promise of an early knockout, the fight went until the final round, with Pacquiao knocking down Larios two times during the 12-round bout for the WBC International Super Featherweight title held at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Philippines.

Final bout with Morales
Pacquiao fighting Érik Morales in their third match.Pacquiao and Morales fought for a third time (with the series tied 1-all) on November 18, 2006. Witnessed by a near-record crowd of 18,276, the match saw Pacquiao defeating Morales via a third-round knockout at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.

After the Pacquiao-Morales rematch, Bob Arum, Pacquiao's main promoter, announced that Manny returned his signing bonus check back to Golden Boy Promotions, signaling intentions to stay with Top Rank. This resulted in GBP's decision to sue Pacquiao over contractual breaches.

At the end of 2006, he was named by both HBO and Ring Magazine as the "Fighter of the Year", with HBO also naming him as the most exciting fighter of the year.

Jorge Solis
After a failed promotional negotiation with Marco Antonio Barrera's camp, Bob Arum chose Jorge Solís as Pacquiao's next opponent among several fighters that Arum offered him to fight as a replacement. The bout was held in San Antonio, Texas on April 14, 2007. In the sixth round of the bout, an accidental headbutt occurred, giving Pacquiao a cut under his left eyebrow. The fight ended in the eighth round when Pacquiao knocked Solis down twice; with Solis barely beating the count after the second knockdown, the referee (who was also a doctor) was prompted to stop the fight. The victory raised Pacquiao's win-loss-draw record to 44-3-2, with 34 knockouts.

Second bout with Barrera
On June 29, 2007, it was announced that Top Rank and GBP agreed to settle their lawsuit, meaning the long-awaited rematch with Marco Antonio Barrera will occur despite being the #1 contender for the Super Featherweight title of Juan Manuel Márquez.

Since Bob Arum was out on a vacation, GBP's chief executive Richard Schaefer politely declined to discuss Pacquiao’s purse from the October 6, 2007 rematch with Marco Antonio Barrera (at the Mandalay Bay Resort Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas). However, Pacquiao was likely to get a purse of $5 million, plus possibly a share of the pay-per-view rights. Pacquiao defeated Barrera in their rematch via an easy unanimous decision. In the 11th round, Pacquiao's punch caused a deep cut under Barrera's right eye. Barrera retaliated with an illegal punch on the break that dazed Pacquiao but also caused the referee to deduct a point from Barrera. Two judges scored the bout 118-109, whereas the third scored it 115-112.

Other events
In The Ring Magazine, Pacquiao (45-3-2) remained at the top of the Junior Lightweight division (130 lbs). He had been in the ratings for 108 weeks. Pacquiao was also at No. 2 in the pound-for-pound category behind former Welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr.

On November 13, 2007, he was honored by the WBC as Champ Emeritus during its 45th Annual World Convention held at the Manila Hotel.

On November 20, 2007, José Nuñez, manager of WBO Super Featherweight champion Joan Guzmán, accused Pacquiao's handler Bob Arum of evading a match between the two boxers to protect Pacquiao. Guzmán went as far as to directly call out Pacquiao at the postfight press conference of the Pacquiao-Barrera rematch in front of a stunned crowd at the Mandalay Bay Events Center's media room in Las Vegas.

The 240-member House of Representatives of the Philippines, on August 7, 2008, issued a Resolution, sponsored by South Cotabato Rep. Darlene Antonino-Custodio, which recognized Pacquiao as “a people’s champ” - “for his achievements and in appreciation of the honor and inspiration he has been bringing ... to the Filipino people.” He received a plaque from Speaker Prospero Nograles.

On July, 2008, it was announced that Pacquiao would be the flag bearer of the Philippines at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He became the first Filipino Olympic non-participant to be Team Philippines’ flag-bearer during the August 8 opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics at the Beijing National Stadium. Swimmer Miguel Molina, 2005 Southeast Asian Games’ Best Male Athlete, yielded the honor to Pacquiao, upon Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's request to national sports officials on the Philippines at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Rematch with Márquez
Pacquiao fighting Juan Manuel Márquez in their second bout.On March 15, 2008, in a rematch against Juan Manuel Márquez called "Unfinished Business", Pacquiao won via a disputed split decision in a close, hard fought battle in which Pacquiao knocked Márquez down in round 3. Pacquiao won the WBC and The Ring Super Featherweight belts, making him the first Filipino to win three world titles in three different weight divisions (Pacquiao was a former WBC Flyweight champion and former IBF Super Bantamweight champion).

During the postfight interview, Márquez’s camp called for an immediate rematch. Richard Schaefer, GBP CEO, offered a $6-million guarantee to Pacquiao for a rematch. Pacquiao's promoter, Bob Arum, still stinging from the less-than-stellar revenue from Kelly Pavlik’s immediate rematch with Jermain Taylor, said the fight will probably happen but only after there is time to “put a little air under it.” Pacquiao, for his part, said "I don't think so, this business is over" because he planned to move to lightweight (135 lbs) to challenge David Díaz, the reigning WBC Lightweight champion at that time. Díaz won the majority decision over Ramón Montano that night as an undercard of the "Unfinished Business" fight.

WBC Lightweight title
On June 28, 2008, at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Pacquiao defeated David Díaz via ninth-round knockout to become the WBC Lightweight champion. With the victory, Pacquiao became the only Filipino and Asian boxer to win four major titles in four weight classes and also became the first Filipino fighter to ever win a world title at Lightweight. The fight ended at 2:23 of the ninth round and was viewed by 8,362 spectators. Bob Arum announced that Pacquiao is most likely to fight November 15 versus 130-lb Venezuelan champion Edwin Valero or Humberto Soto in Planet Hollywood, and he also mentioned the name of WBA, WBO, and IBF Lightweight champion Nate Campbell. "I can fight in November," Pacquiao stated, "Who I fight is the job of my promoter (Bob Arum)." Díaz had his best payday, $850,000, and Pacquiao earned at least $3 million.

Bob Arum reported that the Pacquiao-David Díaz fight which made $ 12.5-M (250,000 pay-per-view subscriptions at $ 49.95 each), paled in comparison to the 400,000 in the Márquez showdown. The sales reached over $20 million. Pacquiao’s 3 classic fights with Érik Morales earned a combined sales of 1 million pay-per-view hits. After HBO and Top Rank get their share, Pacquiao and Díaz will get theirs based on the contract, that is, in addition to the $ 3 million contract pay. Official records revealed an attendance of only 8,362 tickets of the seating capacity of 12,000.

Meanwhile, WBC president Don José Sulaimán clarified that Pacquiao is not a 5-division but 4-division world champion, because the November 2003 Barrera fight was a non-title bout.

Holding both the WBC Super Featherweight and Lightweight titles following the win, Pacquiao decided to vacate his Super Featherweight title in July 2008 in order to defend his Lightweight crown.

Pacquiao vs. De La Hoya
On December 6, 2008, Pacquiao faced Oscar De La Hoya at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, in a fight called Dream Match. Pacquiao asserted himself over De La Hoya from the first round till the eighth round. De La Hoya's corner threw in the towel before the start of the 9th round. Pacquiao won via technical knockout.

Presented by Golden Boy Promotions and Top Rank, Inc., the bout was scheduled as a 12-round, non-title fight contested at the 147-pound Welterweight limit. Although Pacquiao went into the fight widely recognized as the leading pound-for-pound boxer in the world, some boxing pundits had speculated that 147 pounds could be too far above his natural weight against the larger De La Hoya.

Pacquiao received $15 to 30 million (share of the pay-per-view), plus a guaranteed amount.

Tickets reportedly sold out just hours after they went on sale. The total gate revenues were said to be nearly $17 million dollars. That amount apparently gave the bout the second largest gate revenue in boxing history.

Pacquiao vs. Hatton
On May 2, 2009, Pacquiao fought Ricky Hatton for the IBO and Ring Magazine Light Welterweight titles at MGM Grand Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The fight was originally placed in jeopardy due to disputes with both camps over the fight purse money. Eventually, the money issue was settled and the fight went on as scheduled. HBO aired the contest.

Pacquiao started the fight strong, knocking down a sluggish Hatton twice in the first round. At the bell, Hatton seemed to have re-grouped, only to get knocked down for the third time 2:59 into the second round, awarding Pacquiao the win by KO.

Pacquiao vs. Cotto
On November 14, Pacquiao is slated to face WBO welterweight champion Miguel Ángel Cotto of Puerto Rico, at the MGM Grand Las Vegas. Even before Ricky Hatton's fight against Paulie Malignaggi last year, Top Rank promoter Bob Arum stated his desire for Pacquiao to fight Cotto. Pacquiao then gave Arum the go signal to arrange the fight after Cotto won a hard-fought decision against Joshua Clottey at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Meanwhile, current WBA welterweight champion "Sugar" Shane Mosley tried to lure Pacquiao to fight him. Mosley even offered Pacquiao for a fight at junior welterweight (140 pounds), Pacquiao's weight class as of the moment. However, after unsuccessful attempts, Mosley shifted his focus to a fight against WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto.

Among the details that were agreed upon for the Pacquiao-Cotto fight were the weight (both camps agreed to the 145-pound catchweight) and the purse (Pacquiao will get the 60% share of PPV buys, as compared to Cotto's 35% share). As of the moment, it is still not clear whether Cotto's WBO welterweight belt will be at stake, although WBO has ranked Pacquiao as the #1 contender for Cotto's welterweight belt.

Politics
Pacquiao ran for a congressional seat to represent the 1st district of South Cotabato, but he was defeated by Darlene Antonino-Custodio. Custodio had 139,061 votes, whereas Pacquiao received 75,908 votes.

Pacquiao has said he will enter politics after he ends his boxing career. He quietly visited the Philippine Commission on Elections, escorted by Arnold "Ali" Atienza (son of then-Manila Mayor Lito Atienza), to transfer his residence from General Santos City to Manila. This fueled speculations that he may seek an elective post in the nation's capital, which even gave him the title "Adopted Son" after he won his earlier bouts.

His name was once mentioned as a possible vice-mayoralty candidate to the younger Atienza when the latter sought the city's highest post in the 2007 elections, but this did not pan out after Sen. Panfilo Lacson, then the leading candidate for Manila mayor, backed out for contentions regarding Lacson's residency issues (in which Pacquiao also had such issues).

Being known as an Arroyo supporter, his name is also being floated as a candidate of the Lakas-CMD party for the mayoralty race of General Santos City against incumbent Mayor Pedro Acharon. Instead, he was recently sworn-in as a member of the Liberal Party under the Atienza wing, thus further fueling his political ambition.

On February 12, 2007, the famed boxer announced that he was running for congress representing South Cotabato. His decision however easily turned off both his fans and the general public. Election experts stressed that as Pacquiao insists on participating in his next professional boxing match, he will immerse himself into a legal conflict regarding campaign exposure, especially since the match will be televised nationwide. Aside from that, COMELEC commissioner Benjamin Abalos mentioned a possible legal entanglement could ruin Pacquiao's candidacy because he already registered himself as a Manila resident months before.

Numerous sports personalities and analysts around the Philippines expressed that Pacquiao should think seriously and deeply about his sports career, which could potentially be destroyed by the dirty world of politics. On February 24, 2007, in Cebu City, Pacquiao was booed by thousands of spectators as his presence was acknowledged by the organizers of The Battle of Cebu, a WBO-sanctioned boxing festival. The embarrassment later led to confusing statements made by then-Manila Mayor Lito Atienza that the famed fighter would withdraw. The negative sentiment among Cebuanos over Pacquiao's political aspiration was felt even before the "The Battle of Cebu" was held because at least one citizen's comment got published by local newspaper Sun Star.

In relation to the Pacquiao's April 14 fight with Jorge Solis, the political opposition stated that they would not press for a ban on the broadcasting of the match despite its potential to violate election campaign rules. Although he won over Solis, Pacquiao's appeal diminished most likely due to his political ambition. His last fight attracted noticeably smaller audiences, and his performance was considered by many as disappointing. Some election candidates even turned the Pacquiao-Solis match into campaign gigs. Over at General Santos City, Diocese of Marbel spokesman Fr. Angel Buenavides considered President Arroyo's endorsement of Pacquiao as a "curse" because constituents in the area have strong anti-Arroyo sentiments.

On May 17, 2007, Pacquiao suffered a lopsided election defeat to incumbent representative Darlene Antonino-Custodio, with a deficit of approximately 37,000 votes according to the NAMFREL tally. Meanwhile, WBC head José Sulaimán stated that Pacquiao "doesn’t appear to be having the same dynamic impact at the ballot box, as he does in the ringed square." The defeat became a depressing matter for the boxer himself because he lost a huge sum of money when his supporters allegedly funneled campaign funds to their own pockets. Pacquiao's personal money was part of the campaign budget.[64] Ironically, Pacquiao's fans rejoiced over his defeat. Some even declared his loss as a "victory" for boxing. On May 20, 2007, Manny Pacquiao formally conceded to congresswoman Antonino-Custodio, vowing to return to boxing and spend more time with his family.

In August 2007, Pacquiao filed a P30-million libel suit against four journalists of the Manila Bulletin due to an article which stated that he "is reported to be a compulsive gambler and is known to bet hundreds of thousand in casinos, cockfighting, and billiards." The case was later dismissed via "affidavit of desistance", and Pacquiao stated that pursuing the case would only cause inconvenience to him and his family.

On September 1, 2008, Pacquiao was sworn by Secretary Ronaldo Puno, as member of Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (Kampi). Pacquiao officially announced that he is retiring in August 2009, and will be running again in the Philippine general election, 2010.

In popular culture
A film based on Pacquiao's life, Pacquiao: The Movie, was released on June 21, 2006, featuring Filipino actor Jericho Rosales as Manny Pacquiao and was directed by Joel Lamangan. The film flopped at the box office, grossing a total of only P4,812,191 (approximately US$99,322), as confirmed by Lamangan. In 2008, Pacquiao starred with Ara Mina and Valerie Concepcion in his latest action movie titled "Anak ng Kumander". The movie was not a commercial success and was panned by critics.

Pacquiao is featured in the boxing video games Fight Night Round 2, Fight Night Round 3 and Fight Night Round 4. EA Sports released a limited edition demo of Fight Night Round 4, featuring Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton prior to their May 2 fight.

He became the first Filipino athlete to appear on a postage stamp.

With his popularity, various business sectors have solicited Manny Pacquiao's help in endorsing their products through commercial advertisements in print and in broadcast media. These include detergents, medicines, foods, garments, telecommunications, and even a political ad for Chavit Singson during the May 14, 2007 elections. His most acclaimed commercials yet were for Nike's "Fast Forward" campaign (along side Kobe Bryant, Maria Sharapova, Roger Federer, Cristiano Ronaldo and Liu Xiang) and for San Miguel Beer with Jet Li and Érik Morales.

On April 12, 2007, the COMELEC canceled his commercial appearances in accordance with existing Philippine election laws. Airing of the commercials resumed after the elections.

Upon the expiration of his contract with ABS-CBN, he signed up with GMA Network as an actor on September 2007. On December 17, 2007, after finishing a movie, Pacquiao went to the GMA Network to tape his first episode of Pinoy Records.

Pacquiao briefly starred for the TV series by GMA, Carlo J. Caparas' Totoy Bato, alongside fellow actors Robin Padilla and Regine Velasquez. It was first aired in February 2009.

Pacquiao and American actor Sylvester Stallone are in plans of doing a movie. Stallone has stated interest in doing a movie with Pacquiao, who he said will be his co-star in the movie. Stallone, being a Pacquiao fan, showed interest. If the script passes and both sides agree, the film will be Pacquiao's big break to the American audience and American main stream. Plans were only confirmed and interest, thus the script is in works and confirmation as well of both sides agreements of the plot and characters are still not confirmed.

Pacquiao was also mentioned by World Wrestling Entertainment's ECW on Syfy color commentator Matt Striker in reference to Christian's tag team match with Tommy Dreamer vs. Jack Swagger and Mark Henry. Striker compares Christian's left and right punches like the speed of Pacquiao's fists.

Pacquiao has been included by Time Magazine as one of the world's most influential people for the year 2009, for his exploits in boxing and his influence among the Filipino people. Pacquiao was also included by Forbes Magazine in its annual Celebrity 100 list for the year 2009, joining Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie and fellow athletes Tiger Woods and Bryant. Forbes also listed Pacquiao as world's 6th highest-paid athlete, with a total of $40 million from second half of 2008 to first half of 2009. The athletes who ranked ahead of Pacquiao were Woods at number 1 spot ($110 million); Bryant, basketball legend Michael Jordan, and Formula One star Kimi Räikkönen sharing the number 2 rank ($45 million each); and football superstar David Beckham at number 5 ($42 million). Pacquiao had also won the 2009 ESPY Awards for the Best Fighter category, beating fellow boxer Shane Mosley and Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter Lyoto Machida.

Pope Benedict XVI attacked by a woman

2009-12-25T17:32:00.008+07:00

VATICAN CITY: A woman jumped the barriers in St. Peter’s Basilica and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Christmas Eve Mass, but the 82-year-old pontiff got up unhurt and proceeded as planned with Thursday’s service.

Tag: Pope warns against "corrupt" religion at start of Middle East tour

Witness video obtained by The Associated Press showed a woman dressed in a red hooded sweat shirt vaulting over the wooden barriers that cordoned off the basilica’s main aisle and rushing toward the pope before being swarmed by bodyguards.

The video showed the woman grabbing the pope’s vestments as she was taken down by guards, with Benedict then falling on top of her.

The commotion occurred as the pope’s procession was making its way toward the main altar and shocked gasps rang out among the thousands who packed the basilica. The procession came to a halt, the music stopped and security rushed to the trouble spot.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev Ciro Benedettini said the woman appeared to be mentally unstable and had been taken into custody by Vatican police.

He said she also knocked down Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who was taken to hospital for a checkup.

“During the procession an unstable person jumped a barrier and knocked down the Holy Father,” Benedettini told The AP by telephone. “(The pope) quickly got up and continued the procession.”

It was the second year in a row that there had been a security breach at the Christmas Eve service and this was the most serious incident involving the public in Benedict’s five-year papacy.

At the end of last year’s Mass, a woman who had jumped the barriers got close to the pope but was quickly blocked on the ground by security.

That woman too wore a red hooded sweat shirt, but Benedettini said it was not immediately known if the same person was behind Thursday’s incident.

MaryBeth Burns from Paris, Texas, was about four people away from the woman who jumped the barriers and was filming the pope’s procession as the commotion started.

“All of a sudden this person sort of flew over the barricade and the Holy Father went down and all the security people were on top of it, a whole pile there, getting her off and him back up,” said Burns, who was visiting Italy with her family on a religious pilgrimage for Christmas.

This sequence of images taken from amateur video obtained by APTN shows an unidentified woman jumping over a barrier and grabbing Pope Benedict XVI as a guard pulls her down, while the pope walks down the main aisle to begin Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City on Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009. (AP Photo/APTN)

“I’m really mad because I had a perfect shot lined up,” she added. “I’m still shaking.”

Benedict lost his miter and his staff in the fall. He remained on the ground for a few seconds before being helped back up by attendants.

At that point, a few shouts of “viva il papa!” (long live the pope!) rang out, followed by cheers from the faithful, witnesses said.

After getting up, Benedict, flanked by tense bodyguards, resumed his walk to the basilica’s main altar to start the Mass.

Pope Benedict XVI uses a handkerchief, during Christmas Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009. A Vatican spokesman said a woman jumped barriers and knocked down the pontiff as he was arriving for the mass but the 82-year-old pope quickly got up and was unhurt. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The pope, who broke his right wrist in a fall this summer, appeared unharmed but somewhat shaken and leaned heavily on aides and an armrest as he sat down in his chair.

Few people who were watching the Mass on giant screens set up in a rain-soaked St. Peter’s Square even knew that the pope had fallen, with many saying that either they weren’t looking or had arrived too late.

Benedict made no reference to the disturbance after the service started. As a choir sang, he sprinkled incense on the altar before opening the Mass with the traditional wish for peace in Latin.

The incident was the first time a potential attacker came into direct contact with Benedict, and underscored concerns by security analysts who have frequently warned the pope is too exposed in his public appearances.

There have been other security breaches at the Vatican.

In 2007, during an open-air audience in St. Peter’s Square, a mentally unstable German man jumped a security barrier and grabbed the back of the pope’s open car before being swarmed by security guards.

Then there was the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca in 1981. John Paul suffered a severe abdominal wound as he rode in an open jeep at the start of his weekly audience in the Vatican piazza.

The pope is protected by a combination of Swiss Guards, Vatican police and Italian police.

Since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the US, the Vatican has tightened security at events where the pope is present.

All visitors must pass by police to get into the square, with those entering the basilica going through metal detectors or being scanned by metal-detecting wands.

A general view of St. Peter's Basilica as Pope Benedict XVI celebrates Christmas Mass, at the Vatican, Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009. A woman jumped the barriers in St. Peter's Basilica and knocked down the pontiff as he walked down the main aisle to begin Christmas Eve Mass on Thursday, a Vatican spokesman said. The Rev. Ciro Benedettini said the 82-year-old pope quickly got up and was unhurt. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

However, Sister Samira, an Indian aide to Vatican officials who attended the service and saw the incident, said she is never searched by security when she attends papal Masses, and said the same holds true for other people in religious garb.

Burns, the US pilgrim, said security had been tight, and that it seemed there was no way to have prevented the woman from getting to the pope other than keeping the public out altogether.

“This is Midnight Mass in the heart of our church,” she said. “I guess the Holy Father puts himself at risk every time he’s around anybody, any crowds really.”

In a similar incident, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was attacked as he was greeting the crowd at a political rally earlier this month. A man with a history of psychological problems hurled a souvenir statuette at the politician, fracturing his nose and breaking two of his teeth.

Benedict celebrated this year’s Christmas Eve Mass two hours earlier than the usual midnight starting time in a move by the Vatican to ease the pontiff’s busy holiday schedule.

Benedict has been remarkably healthy during his pontificate, keeping to a busy schedule and travelling around the world.

But in July, he broke his wrist during a late-night fall while vacationing in an Alpine chalet and had to have minor surgery and wear a cast for a month - an episode that highlights the risk he ran in Thursday’s tumble.

In his homily, delivered unflappably after the incident, the pope urged the world to “wake up” from selfishness and petty affairs, and find time for God and spiritual matters.

“To wake up means to leave that private world of one’s own and to enter the common reality,” Benedict said in Italian.

“Conflict and lack of reconciliation in the world stem from the fact that we are locked into our own interests and opinions, into our own little private world.”

Benedict’s next scheduled appearance is at noon on Christmas Day, when he is to deliver his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” speech (Latin for “To the city and the world”) from the basilica’s balcony. -- AP

Brittany Murphy Biography

2009-12-24T18:44:00.005+07:00

Born: November 10, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Died: 20 December 2009 (heart failure)
Job Titles: Actor, Singer

Family
Father: Angelo Bertolotti. An Italian American racketeering criminal; has had little contact with her father since her parents divorced
Mother: Sharon Murphy. Irish American and Eastern European descent; divorced Brittany s father when she was a baby

Tag: Actress Brittany Murphy dies at 32, Brittany Murphy father can't believe she's dead

On December 20, 2009, Murphy died suddenly after going into cardiac arrest. At the time of her death, she had several films in post-production, yet to be released.

Actress Brittany Murphy made a Hollywood specialty of playing rough-around-the-edges chums and lovers. After guest starring roles in TV series like Blossom and Party of Five, she made her feature film debut in Clueless (1995) as Tai, the low-rent ugly duckling befriended by Alicia Silverstone's sleek Cher. Murphy won good reviews as Daisy, Winona Ryder's suicidal fellow mental patient in Girl, Interrupted (1999). She followed that with supporting roles in a string of "chick flicks" including Sidewalks of New York (2001) and Riding In Cars With Boys (2002, with Drew Barrymore). Murphy gradually remade herself from dowdy brunette to slim and sultry blonde: she played Eminem's fame-hungry girlfriend in 8 Mile, the 2002 film inspired by the rapper's life, the waitress Shellie in the violent comic book drama Sin City (2005, with Bruce Willis) and the noodle-master-in-training of The Ramen Girl (2008). Murphy also provided the voice of Luanne in the long-running animated series King of the Hill.
Murphy married screenwriter Simon Monjack in May 2007. She had been engaged to film crew electrician Joe Macaluso in December of 2005; they had split in August of 2006. She had previously been engaged to Jeff Kwatinetz, CEO of the talent management company The Firm... She provided vocals on Paul Oakenfold's single Faster Kill Pussycat, a dance club hit in 2006.

Biography
Brittany Murphy first came to the attention of film audiences as Tai, one of Alicia Silverstone's airhead friends, in the 1995 comedy Clueless. Though convincing as a dim-bulb character, Murphy cuts dramatically against this grain off-camera, as a ferociously intelligent and ambitious young performer who had acting in her blood from early childhood. As a teenager and young adult, she gave expression to the scope of her talent and versatility with a series of engaging film and television roles.

Born in Atlanta on November 10, 1977, Murphy was raised by her single mother in Edison, New Jersey; she later indicated, in interviews, that her mom struggled financially - that they were forced to eat spaghetti night after night, and that on certain occasions, she had to beg her mother to buy clothes at KMart; this would later account for Murphy's marked social investment in homeless causes, as discussed in a February 2003 Glamour article.

A precocious child who began putting on shows when she was a toddler, Murphy was acting in regional theatre productions by the age of nine. Work in various commercials followed, and in 1990 she landed her first television appearance at the age of twelve, on the sitcom Blossom. She also secured a supporting role as Brenda Drexell, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Dabney Coleman's fifth grade teacher Otis Drexell, on the (mercifully) short-lived 1991 FOX sitcom Drexell's Class. The following year, Murphy took her first cinematic bow in the dysfunctional family drama Family Prayers.

Murphy's talent for portraying, dramatically, all degrees on the spectrum of behavioral dysfunction further came to light in three successive projects through 1999: the blackly comic Reese Witherspoon trailer trash odyssey Freeway (1996) (as a disfigured lesbian who befriends Witherspoon's Vanessa); a mental patient in Lloyd Kramer's made-for-TV David and Lisa (1998), and James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted (1999) (as yet another resident at a mental institution).

Meanwhile, on a less ambitious (albeit more whimsical) note, Murphy also became a fixtureon King of the Hill, Mike Judge's long-running contemporary cartoon of suburban life in the southern U.S., as Luanne Platter, the hair stylist niece who comes to live with Hank Hill's family. Murphy kept a full plate as the millennium wrapped. In addition to her work for Mangold in 1999,

she also explored the collective insanity of the beauty pageant world in Drop Dead Gorgeous, while on the small screen, she covered much darker thematic ground with the well-received Holocaust drama The Devil's Arithmetic (also 1999). In 2001, Murphy appeared in the Michael Douglas thriller Don't Say a Word, and alongside Drew Barrymore in Riding in Cars With Boys.

Cast opposite Eminem in director Curtis Hanson's 2002 drama 8 Mile, Murphy performed compellingly as an aspiring rap star's unapologetic muse; in 2004, Murphy headlined Nick Hurran's thoroughly disappointing rom-com Little Black Book. She also made a splash in Robert Rodriguez's innovative graphic novel adaptation Sin City, as the arrogant waitress who becomes the prize in a heated rivalry between Benicio del Toro and Clive Owen.

Murphy made appearances in four features in 2006. In Alex Keshishian's progressive romantic comedy Love and Other Disasters, she played a London-based American expatriate, employed at Vogue, who tries to fix up her gay roommate; in Ed Burns's sixth directorial outing, the Big Chill-like romantic comedy The Groomsmen, she played the expectant girlfriend of Burns's Paulie. She also portrayed a member of the ensemble in Karen Moncrieff's murder mystery The Dead Girl, about a group of seemingly disconnected individuals whose lives intersect as a girl's murderer comes to light, and one of the lead voices in George "Babe" Miller's Happy Feet, an animated penguin tale.

Murphy's appearance alongside Ashton Kutcher in Just Married was - to some degree - a case of art imitating life: offscreen, Murphy and Kutcher began to date as well (and became a hot tabloid item), though unlike their onscreen counterparts, they never wed. Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Brittany Murphy father can't believe she's dead

2009-12-23T15:18:00.004+07:00

London : Brittany Murphy’s estranged dad Angelo Bertolotti is in shock over his daughter’s untimely death. Murphy, 32, died of a cardiac arrest at her Hollywood Hills home last Sunday.

"There is nothing I can say. I can't believe this is happening. She was a young 32. She wasn't supposed to die like this," the Daily Star quoted Bertolotti, as telling UsMagazine.com. "I don't understand how she died. This doesn't make sense to me." Bertolotti also revealed that he had not seen Murphy since 2006.

He said: "Ever since she married that Simon, I lost contact with her. But I always kept track of her to make sure she was OK in case she needed me. She married him and everything changed. After that, we weren't so close."

Bertolotti added: "I will miss her smile and her work ethic. She was such a hard worker. I was so proud of her. This was a girl who had been working since she was seven. Everyone she worked with loved her. That's who she was. She was loveable. There is nothing more I can say. I'm trying to make sense of this, and I can't."

Actress Brittany Murphy dies at 32

2009-12-21T14:42:00.007+07:00

Murphy died at the Age of 32
Actress Brittany Murphy, known for her roles in films such as "Clueless" and "8 Mile," died after suffering a cardiac arrest at her home, police and hospital officials said. She was 32.

Murphy who was pronounced dead in hospital, appeared to have died of natural causes.

The Reuters news agency is reporting that the actress died of a cardiac arrest.

Ashton Kutcher, co-star of the 2003 comedy Just Married, paid tribute to her as a "little piece of sunshine".

The official cause of death may not be determined for some time as toxicology tests are required.

Murphy was pronounced dead at 1004 (1804 GMT) on Sunday at a hospital near Beverly Hills.

She had been taken there after the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to a call at the Hollywood Hills home she shared with her husband, British screenwriter Simon Monjack.

Born in Atlanta, Murphy grew up in New Jersey but moved to Los Angeles with her mother to pursue acting.

"When I asked my mom to move to California, she sold everything and moved out here for me," Murphy once said.

"I was really grateful to have grown up in an environment that was conducive to creating and didn't stifle any of that."

The actress got her start in the sleeper hit Clueless and rose to stardom in 8 Mile alongside rapper Eminem.

Her on-screen roles declined in recent years but Murphy voiced characters for the hit US television series King of the Hill and animated movie Happy Feet.

She is due to appear in Sylvester Stallone's film, The Expendables, set for release next year.

Kaiane Aldorino Pictures

2009-12-20T17:00:00.009+07:00

Miss world 2009 winner is Gibraltar’s Kaiane Aldorino who defeated 111 contestants from different countries.Aldorino was crowned by Kseniasukhi Nova, the Miss World 2008, of Russia. “Thank you South Africa, this is the most wonderful moment of my life,” said Aldorino with tears in her eyes. Miss Mexico Perla Beltran finished is first runner up, while South Africa’s Tatum Keshwar took the third place.

Tag: Biography, Miss World from Gibraltar

Former Miss World and Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra was one of the judges in the contest whose final round saw a close contest between seven beauty queens. Miss India Pooja Chopra, who participated in the contest, nursing an injured ankle, made it to the semi-final along with 15 other contestants but was eliminated in the penultimate round.

pictues by,AP/Getty/

His mom brings heat as galpal’s baby eyed

2009-12-19T18:56:00.003+07:00

Tiger Woods with his mother, Kultida.
Tiger Woods is “doing everything he can to save his marriage,” while his mother is “hurt, angry and disappointed” and worried about her grandchildren, celebrity gossip sites reported yesterday.

Tag: Tiger Woods to take ‘indefinite’ leave from golf

As the sordid tale of the golfer’s infidelity continues to drag on, celebrity Web site RadarOnline, citing a friend, dropped the explosive bomb that his purported cougar girlfriend Theresa Rogers wanted to have a baby with him and that the paternity of a baby girl she did have, though not thought to be his, remains uncertain.

Citing another friend, RadarOnline reported yesterday the disgraced duffer is looking at a “lonely holiday” on his 135-foot yacht, Privacy. The source said, “He needs to clear his head for a while. He needs to process everything.”

Despite numerous reports that his humiliated Swedish wife, Elin Nordegren, wants a divorce - 14 reported mistresses is more than she can bear - another celebrity Web site, TMZ, cited a source who said Tiger is making “lots of phone calls,” desperately trying to convince her to stay.

Also yesterday, People magazine cited a family friend as saying Tiger’s mother, Kultida Woods, is “hurt, angry and disappointed in Tiger. She wants to know how he could do this to his family.”

“She loves him and will support him through anything, but she needs some time to work through this,” the source said. “It was devastating to her. She likes Elin, and adores her grandchildren. She’s worried about them. She doesn’t want to see them hurt.”

Meanwhile, Tiger Woods is in no way linked to the drug-related criminal charges brought against a Canadian sports doctor who treated the superstar golfer, the doctor’s lawyer said outside a Canadian courtroom yesterday.

“Any suggestion of any linkage to Tiger Woods is nonexistent,” said Dr. Anthony Galea’s lawyer, Brian H. Greenspan.
By Herald Staff.
Photo by AP

Gibraltar's Kaiane Aldorino crowned

2009-12-13T15:15:00.004+07:00

Miss World 2009 Winner.
JOHANNESBURG — Kaiane Aldorino from Gibraltar was named the new Miss World at a glittering two-hour pageant that put South Africa in the spotlight and featured traditional dancers and drummers.

The leggy brunette, dressed in white-lace evening gown, was crowned as silver confetti rained down onstage around her. She clapped her hands to her mouth when her name was announced.

Tag: Biography, Miss Universe, Football, Michael Jackson

"I have no words," she said when asked to describe how she felt. "I am really happy."

The 23-year-old administrative clerk from the British territory on the tip of the Iberian peninsula was a crowd favorite after winning the swimsuit competition.

She joined seven other contestants in the final round of the show. The loudest cheers were reserved for Miss South Africa, Tatum Keshwar who was the second runner-up.

First runner-up was Miss Mexico, Perla Beltran Acosta.

Aldorino did not give an indication of what her immediate plans were now that she had won the prestigious title.

"I will try to do the best that I can now that I have opportunity and advantage," she said in a brief interview with The Associated Press after the event.

Gibraltar, known as The Rock, is a quirky, multicultural British outpost of 30,000 people, most of whom speak perfect Spanish and even own property along Spain's southern Mediterranean coast. An estimated 12,000 people cross over from Spain daily to work and many more to visit.

Spain ceded sovereignty of Gibraltar to Britain in a 1713 treaty, but has persistently sought its return, claiming the territory as a natural and historic part of its geography. The outcropping is in the Strait of Gibraltar, for centuries a strategic waterway linking the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Wearing her crown of tiny jeweled blue flowers, Aldorino said had been impressed with South Africa, which was hosting its seventh Miss World final.

"It has a lot to offer," she said.

South Africa is taking advantage of the world's attention as the country gears up to host the World Cup in June.

Saturday's show, which was televised across the world, gave a taste of South Africa's rich cultural heritage and natural attractions.

The 112 contestants were welcomed at the start by Zulu dancers and the ululating African female performers. There were clips from the finalists time in South Africa — showing the beauties cuddling cheetahs and lions, on pristine white beaches and even playing soccer.

"It is a wonderful opportunity for South Africa to showcase that they can host a world-class event and also a great tourist opportunity to show off the best that South Africa has in store," Keshwar said.

By NKEMELENG NKOSI (AP)

Kaiane Aldorino Biography

2009-12-13T14:45:00.003+07:00

Kaiane Aldorino: Miss World 2009 in Johannesburg.
Kaiane Aldorino profile and Biography - Kaiane Aldorino belongs to Gibraltar country and her age is 22. Aldorinois HR Clerk by profession and the winner of Miss World title of year 2009.Aldorino loves her home country too much beacuse she fells Gibraltar has safe environment and natural beauty. Her main hobbies are to dance, travel and to spend time with her loved ones. Her main ambition in life prior to winning the crown was to further her career and to be successful in her life. She is a very outgoing person who loves to enjoy a sunny day in the outdoors with her loved ones that include her family and friends.

Kaiane Aldorino profile and brief biography
Full name : Kaiane Aldorino
Age : 23
Height : 174
Star sign : Cancer
Hair color : Brown
Eyes color: Brown
Language : English & Spanish

Tiger Woods to take ‘indefinite’ leave from golf

2009-12-12T15:09:00.004+07:00

Tiger Woods said Friday he is taking an indefinite leave from golf to try to save his marriage, the biggest fallout yet from two shocking weeks filled with allegations of rampant extramarital affairs.

“I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father, and person,” Woods said on his Web site.

Woods and his wife, Elin, have been married five years and have a 2-year-old daughter and a 10-month-old son.

The announcement came two weeks after Woods crashed his SUV into a tree outside his Florida home, setting in motion a stunning downfall for the world’s No. 1 player who for 13 years rarely made news off the golf course. One woman who said she had a 31-month affair with Woods shared a voice mail that she said Woods left her two nights before his Nov. 27 accident.

“I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children,” Woods said. “I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness. It may not be possible to repair the damage I’ve done, but I want to do my best to try.”

Woods has not been seen in public since the accident.

He gave no indication when he might return in what could be a pivotal year as he pursues the record 18 major championships won by Jack Nicklaus. Woods, who did not win a major this year, has 14.

The Masters, where Woods has won four times, is April 8-11. The U.S. Open is at Pebble Beach, where Woods won by a record 15 strokes in 2000, and the British Open returns to St. Andrews, where he has won twice by a combined 13 shots.

It will be the second straight year that a PGA Tour season begins without its star player. A year ago, Woods was recovering from reconstructive knee surgery that kept him out a total of eight months.

This is different.

“We knew before he was coming back,” said Steve Stricker, one of Woods’ favorite players on tour. “Now, we’re not sure when he’s coming back. But this sounds good. I hope everything works out for him.”

The PGA Tour supported the decision.

“His priorities are where they need to be, and we will continue to respect and honor his family’s request for privacy,” PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said in a statement, the tour’s first public comment since Woods mentioned his “personal failings” and “transgressions” in a Dec. 2 statement. “We look forward to Tiger’s return to the PGA Tour when he determines the time is right for him.”

Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, told The Associated Press that it was the right decision for Woods and his family.

“The entirety of someone’s life is more important than just a professional career,” Steinberg said in an e-mail to the AP. “What matters most is a young family that is trying to cope with difficult life issues in a secluded and caring way. Whenever Tiger may return to the game should be on the family’s terms alone.”

Craig Parry, who played a practice round with Woods in Australia last month, said Woods brought the problems on himself.

“What he did was totally wrong,” Parry said at the Australian PGA Championship. “And he’s got no one to blame except himself. You can look at other people, but he’s the one who’s got to look in the mirror.”

John Daly, who is going through his third divorce, said he has been trying to reach Woods and “he just didn’t want to talk to anybody.”

“I feel if there is anybody in this world who could give him some advice …” Daly said in Australia. “I hope we get him back soon. They always say there is no one bigger in golf than the game itself. But Tiger is.”

Woods was out of action from July 2008 until the end of February this year, and television ratings dropped 50 percent. The tour is trying to renew a half-dozen title sponsors, and it is to begin negotiations on the next television contract later next year.

As for Woods’ corporate endorsements, all have stood by him for now.

“Tiger has been part of Nike for more than a decade,” Nike said in a statement Friday. “He is the best golfer in the world and one of the greatest athletes of his era. We look forward to his return to golf. He and his family have Nike’s full support.”

Meanwhile, Accenture no longer has an image of Woods on the home page of its Web site. Earlier this week, Woods standing amid cactus plants studying his next shot was among three rotating pictures on the home page.

AT&T said it supported Woods’ decision.

“We are presently evaluating our ongoing relationship with him,” the company said in a statement. Not only does Woods carry the AT&T logo on his golf bag, the company is the title sponsor of his PGA Tour event over the July 4th weekend.

Steinberg said it would be “premature and inappropriate” to talk about Woods’ specific business relationships.

“Suffice it to say, we have had thoughtful conversations and his sponsors have been open to a solution-oriented dialogue,” Steinberg said. “Of course, each sponsor has unique considerations and ultimately the decisions they make we would fully understand and accept.”

Earlier this year, Woods became the world’s first athlete to surpass $1 billion in career earnings, according to Forbes magazine. His sponsors include Nike, Gillette, AT&T, Gatorade and Tag Heuer.

Woods last played a tournament Nov. 15 when he won the Australian Masters for his 82nd victory around the world.

Stricker, who went undefeated as Woods’ partner at the Presidents Cup, said his leave was the right decision.

“I think it’s great that he’s going to put his family first and work things out,” Stricker said from Naples, Fla., where he is playing the Shark Shootout. “Golf will always be there. He wants to make sure his marriage is right and everything is good on the homefront. We’ll sure miss him on tour until he gets things taken care of.”

Woods also indicated he would step away from the work of the Tiger Woods Foundation, which has served some 10 million children.

“There are millions of young people who have truly changed their lives through the foundation’s programs, and millions more still counting on us for help,” Woods said in a separate statement through his foundation. “I am committed to them and to the foundation’s excellent work, and I know my staff will continue these efforts during my absence.”

Associated Press Writer Dennis Passa in Coolum, Australia, and Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer
-Sport yahoo

Miley Cyrus song ruled out of Grammy race

2009-12-12T14:38:00.004+07:00

A song by US teen star Miley Cyrus that had been nominated for a Grammy award has now been ruled ineligible.

The Climb, featured in Hannah Montana: The Movie, had been shortlisted for the best song written for motion picture, television or other visual media prize.

Because the track was not specifically written for the film, it has now been replaced by another song.

The 52nd Grammy Awards, presented by the Recording Academy, will be held in Los Angeles on 31 January.

Oscar-winning

In a statement, the Academy said it went "to great lengths to review submissions through a meticulous and rigorous screening process".

"Despite this procedure, there are rare occasions where changes are required."

The Climb, it continued, had been withdrawn after Walt Disney Records "verified that the song was not written specifically for the film".

Its place in the shortlist will now be filled by Karen O song All Is Love, which featured in the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are.

Other songs in this category include Bruce Springsteen's title track from The Wrestler and Jai Ho, an Oscar-winning song from Slumdog Millionaire.

Miley Cyrus, daughter of country star Billy Ray, kicks off her first UK tour on Sunday at the O2 arena in London.

It has been reported that the winner of this year's X Factor will record The Climb as their debut single, a leading contender for the Christmas number one spot.

-BBC

Shakira takes to Oxford Union stage

2009-12-08T16:28:00.002+07:00

Shakira shocked to be on the same Oxford Union stage as Churchill.
Pop star Shakira spoke of her shock at being asked to occupy the same Oxford Union stage as such luminaries as Winston Churchill - but admitted "I'm no Mother Teresa".

The Colombian-born Hips Don't Lie star said it was a "privilege" to be speaking in front of the 400 Oxford University students at the world-famous debating society, as others including the Dalai Lama have done.

The Colombian-born Hips Don't Lie star said it was a "privilege" to be speaking in front of the 400 Oxford University students at the world-famous debating society, as others including the Dalai Lama have done.

She kept the students waiting for 20 minutes before her half-hour appearance.

The 32-year-old Grammy Award winner, wrapped up for the cold weather in a coral pink dress and black cardigan, said: "It is a privilege to be here today, that you have afforded me this opportunity for me to speak to you."

To laughter and mock booing from the audience, Shakira, known for her dancing, added: "I must admit I am somewhat mystified as to why you are here, as there won't be any singing or any hip shaking whatsoever. So how do I go from Barranquilla, Colombia, to occupy the same stage as Newton and Churchill? Lord knows I'm no Mother Teresa."

Shakira, a Unicef goodwill ambassador who has run her own charity since she was 18, used her speech to stress the importance of education for all.

Asked if her glamorous image as a successful singer stopped her being taken seriously in her charity work, Shakira frowned before saying: "No. I think those two paths have been so parallel in my life. I think they walk hand in hand with each other.

"My career gives me an enormous opportunity to communicate issues that I believe strongly should be communicated."

Beyonce and Taylor Swift lead Grammy nominations

2009-12-03T15:22:00.002+07:00

Beyonce's I Am... Sasha Fierce is nominated in the best album category
R&B singer Beyonce led the field of Grammy contenders with 10 nominations, closely followed by teen country sensation Taylor Swift with eight, and both will compete for coveted album of the year.

Swift, 19, whose Fearless album is the biggest seller in the United States in 2009, will compete with Beyonce for album of the year along with the Black Eyed Peas, Dave Matthews Band and Lady Gaga, who has gone from obscurity to worldwide fame this year with her debut album The Fame. Sasha Fierce produced the hit singles Halo and Single Ladies.

Dylan still does it

Veteran Bob Dylan, 68, was nominated for best Americana album for Together Through Life and best solo rock performance for his Beyond Here Lies Nothin' album which debuted at number one in the US album charts in May.

The best new artist category was an eclectic mix of British rock duo The Ting Tings, country artists the Zac Brown Band, American alternative rockers Silversun Pickups, rock duo MGMT (formerly known as The Management) and singer Keri Hilson.

Katey Sagal relishing her role on hit 'Sons of Anarchy'

2009-11-29T16:19:00.002+07:00

Katey Sagal has found a new lease on TV life with FX’s ‘Sons of Anarchy.’
New York - Season two of the FX drama "Sons of Anarchy" is primed to end with bloody payback. The Sons, a fierce and fiercely close-knit motorcycle club, are set to wreak havoc on enemy forces that have cut into their outlaw livelihood and horned in on their turf (the curiously named town of Charming, Calif.).

Further upping the ante for the season conclusion (Tuesday at 10 p.m.): The club must teach the ultimate lesson to that band of white separatists who, at the season's start, sent the club a message by seizing and raping its matriarch, Gemma Morrow.

Played by Katey Sagal, Gemma is dishy, shrewd and tough as wife to the club's president (Ron Perlman) and mother of its rival for the throne (Charlie Hunnam).
But recoiling from the shock and shame of her attack, she has shown viewers a previously unglimpsed vulnerable side.
"This season I had to keep asking myself, 'Who is she, vulnerable?'" says Sagal. For three seasons she starred on the ABC comedy "8 Simple Rules," which was rocked by the sudden death of co-star John Ritter early its second year.
Gemma came into her life thanks to her husband, Kurt Sutter, who created "Sons of Anarchy" after seven seasons as writer and executive producer of FX's landmark cop drama "The Shield."

"He began researching outlaw motorcycle gangs and came up with a great sort of mythology about that world," Sagal explains. Sagal laughs. "I know there's nefarious behavior, and gangs, and guns and gunrunning. (Among the series' large ensemble, Mark Boone Junior, Tommy Flanagan, Johnny Lewis, Theo Rossi, Ryan Hurst, William Lucking and Kim Coates play other club members.)

Like Gemma, they've got personal issues that don't get much personal scrutiny.
"Those people are all about shame, guilt, denial, secrets," says Sagal. At the same time, these are not goons or buffoons, any more than Gemma is the cliche motorcycle mama. They're relatable to viewers as fellow members of the nation's least exclusive club: the struggling working class.
Business setbacks, and worse, abound for the Sons. "I think that's what viewers are responding to," says Sagal. "The characters' everyday-ness."
Now, as Sagal awaits the "Sons" finale (she says she holds off screening each episode until it airs), she plans to fill her hiatus with voicing sessions for "Futurama."

Plus making music. An accomplished singer before she started acting, she spent a decade touring with such headliners as Bette Midler, Etta James and Bob Dylan. Only once did she offer him a suggestion: that Gemma - who, like most of the family, consumes plenty of tobacco and pot - go cold turkey.

Robbie Williams denies engagement

2009-11-29T15:43:00.003+07:00

Robbie Williams has said he is not engaged to his girlfriend, despite his mother appearing to confirm the news.

Under the heading "Robbie And Ayda: Are They Or Aren't They?" on his official website, Williams simply wrote: "Hey all. We are not engaged. Rob."

Speculation began when the singer made an off-the-cuff proposal to Ayda Field on an Australian radio show.

His spokesman said it was a joke, but his mother Jan later told BBC 5 live he had been planning to pop the question.

After Williams published his denial on Saturday, his spokesman said: "We have no more comment on this apart from to confirm that they are not engaged."

On Friday, Mrs Williams told 5 live that her son had revealed his proposal plans to her "a week ago".

She said she was "really pleased" for the couple, adding: "I've always wanted a daughter-in-law."

Ayda Field has been with Robbie for almost three years
Asked when she thought the wedding would be, Mrs Williams said: "I don't think it will be that far in the not-too-distant future, but that's all I'm going to say on that."

She added: "I'm very excited. I'm really pleased. They've been together for nearly three years, so it's about time.

"She's a great mate, as well as a lover. She's got all the qualities that he needs in a girl. It's a lovely match."

Williams had appeared on Australian radio station 2Day FM, where breakfast show host Jackie Henderson told him that Sydney had a reputation for celebrity proposals.

Turning to his girlfriend, the 35-year-old said: "Ayda Field, I love you so much. Do you mind being my betrothed for the end of time?"

Field, who was in the studio at the time, laughed before saying: "I would love to be your betrothed 'til the end of time."

The star performed at the Aria Awards in Australia on Friday
He then borrowed Henderson's frog ring and slipped it onto Field's finger.

For the remainder of the show, Williams accepted the congratulations of fans who phoned in to speak to him.

But when one caller asked Williams to divulge the last lie he had told, he replied: "I told one this morning.

"I mainly just tell people the truth. With the exception of a few white lies here and there."

Earlier this month, Williams told Jonathan Ross on his chat show that he thought he was "going to be a bachelor" until he met Field.

"I was introduced to Ayda and things just changed. She's a wonderful person and I'm in love. She's really broody and I'm getting there," he said.
by:bbc

Michael Jackson Moonwalk glove auctioned for $350,000

2009-11-22T14:39:00.004+07:00

The glove worn by Michael Jackson
A rhinestone-encrusted glove worn by Michael Jackson the first time he performed the Moonwalk has been sold at auction for $350,000 (£212,000).

The glove, among 70 items belonging to the late singer which went on sale in New York, was sold for nine times the expected price.

A jacket worn by Jackson on his 1989 "Bad" tour was sold for $225,000 while a fedora hat went for $22,000.

The auction in New York attracted thousands of bidders around the world.

Auctioneer Darren Julien said the 1983 television appearance when Jackson first displayed the Moonwalk - wearing the glove - had been his "most historical performance".

The glove was bought by a Hong Kong businessman
Mr Julien said he had had no idea the sale would be so big.

Prices for Michael Jackson memorabilia now outstrip those for items belonging to Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe, he added.

"It's a tribute to his life and career - he's truly an amazing artist," said Mr Julien.

The glove was bought by Hong Kong businessman Hoffman Ma on behalf of a hotel in Macau China, where it will now go on display.

Including taxes and fees, the final amount paid was $420,000.

Michael Jackson died at his home in Los Angeles in June at the age of 50 after a drugs overdose.

Miley Cyrus tour bus crash leaves one dead

2009-11-21T14:53:00.002+07:00

An accident which involved singer Miley Cyrus's tour bus has killed one passenger, US police have confirmed.

Sergeant Thomas Molnar said the bus - which the teenage singer was not on at the time - overturned as it travelled on a main road in central Virginia.

One of the other nine passengers suffered minor injuries.

The 16-year-old's website said the Hannah Montana star is expected to perform Sunday in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The Disney star is scheduled to play two dates in London next month.

Cyrus, who is the daughter of country singer Billy Ray, began her solo singing career in 2007 with her debut album, Meet Miley Cyrus.

five films vying to win the Oscar

2009-11-13T15:36:00.002+07:00

Disney-Pixar's Up is a strong contender for the award
There will be five films vying to win the Oscar for best animated film next year after a record 20 movies were submitted for consideration.

Most years only see three nominations, as under Academy rules at least 16 eligible films must be submitted to expand the category to five runners.

Box office hit Up, Fantastic Mr Fox, Monsters vs Aliens and Coraline are all on the list of hopefuls.

The nominations will be announced on 2 February with the ceremony on 7 March.

Best picture

Also in the running include Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, A Christmas Carol, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

Since the best animated film category was introduced in 2002 - which was won by Shrek - there has only been one year where five films have been nominated for the award.

In 2003, 17 films qualified and Japanese film-maker Hayao Miyazaki's fantasy Spirited Away claimed the Oscar.

Films submitted in the animated feature film category can also run in other categories including best picture, but the only film ever to do so to date was Disney classic Beauty and the Beast in 1991.

British Airways and Iberia agree merger plans

2009-11-13T15:18:00.002+07:00

The merger has been a long time in the planning.
British Airways and Spanish airline Iberia have reached a preliminary agreement for a merger expected to be completed in late 2010.

The merger, which is expected to get regulatory backing, would create the world's third biggest airline.

Under its terms, Iberia would take a 45% stake and BA, which last week reported a six-month pre-tax loss of £292m, a 55% stake in the new company.

Iberia says it can pull out if BA fails to resolve its pension deficit problem.

'Growing dominance'
"The merger will create a strong European airline well able to compete in the 21st Century," said BA chief executive Willie Walsh.

"Both airlines will retain their brands and heritage while achieving significant synergies as a combined force."

The deal would create an airline with 419 aircraft flying to 205 separate destinations, and would save the two partners 400m euros ($594m; £358m) in costs a year, the two carriers said.

Iberia's chairman Antonio Vazquez will take the same role at the new company, while Mr Walsh will become its chief executive.

Aviation analyst Douglas McNeil of Astaire Securities said BA would be "relieved" to have finally got the merger deal in place.

"I think BA will be pleased with the deal they have got - the headquarters in London, led by Willie Walsh, and BA will be majority shareholder," he said.

Simon Calder, travel editor of the Independent, agreed that the planned merger was a good deal for BA.

"British Airways has come out of this pretty well, it will be the dominant partner," he said.

"Don't expect any great benefits [after the merger] if you are a passenger, but if you are a shareholder it could be a different story."

News of the deal did not go down well with Virgin Atlantic, one of BA's big competitors in the UK, which raised concerns about the new company's market share.

"The merger will increase BA's dominance at Heathrow with 44% of take-off and landing slots this winter. It is impossible for any other airline to replicate their scale," the airline said.

Big losses

Both BA and Iberia have been losing money during the downturn as businesses and individuals cut back on flying.

Mr Walsh has previously said a merger would help both firms cope with the recession.

The firms have considered a tie-up for a number of years and held talks on the issue in July 2008.

BA already owns 13.5% of Iberia and the two carriers have a code-sharing agreement under the One World grouping of airlines, which allows them to sell seats on each other's services.

If a merger is formalised, it would still require regulatory approval from the European Commission.

However, analysts say a deal is likely to be cleared, pointing to Air France's successful merger with Dutch airline KLM in 2004.

Financial woes
The agreement comes a week after BA said it would cut a further 1,200 jobs, as it reported a first-half loss for the first time.

Michael Jackson's father seeks allowance

2009-11-09T14:47:00.003+07:00

Court papers gave a list of Joe Jackson's expenses
Joe Jackson has requested an allowance from the estate of his late son Michael, saying the pop star supported him for years before his death.

In court papers filed in Los Angeles, the 81-year-old's lawyers said his monthly expenses are $20,000, but he receives only $1,700 from the state.

They added that the pop star's estate has earned an estimated $100m (£60.1m) since his sudden death on 25 June.

A hearing to assess the request is expected to take place early next year.

Michael Jackson's will omitted his father, but made provision for his mother and children.

Monthly payments to Katherine Jackson along with his daughter and two sons were approved by a judge last month.

They may be re-evaluated at the same time as the hearing to determine Joe Jackson's case.

Documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court state that Joe Jackson does not have a regular income and relied on payments from his son which came through his wife Katherine for many years.

Joe Jackson's lawyers went on to state that he has diabetes and suffered a stroke a decade ago.

His only source of income comes from social security payments, they added.

Howard Weitzman, a lawyer for the administrators of the pop star's estate, said it was "quite surprising to learn of the request".

He added: "Mr Jackson's petition will be considered as are all requests for money from Michael's estate."

Joe Jackson's outgoings were listed in the court papers and included rent for his Las Vegas home, meals out, air travel and hotel accommodation.

Beyonce wins MTV Europe Music Awards

2009-11-07T14:52:00.004+07:00

Singer Beyonce has landed a trio of trophies at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Berlin.

The singer fought off rivals including Leona Lewis to win best female, plus best song for Halo and best video for Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).

She dedicated her best video award to rapper husband Jay-Z, saying: "There's only one person I want to thank and that is Jay for putting a ring on it."

Singer Katy Perry hosted the ceremony for the second year in a row.

The singer - who is dating comedian Russell Brand - performed a medley of the five best song contenders, including Halo and and Kings of Leon's Use Somebody.

She set the tone for the evening by asking the crowd: "Are you feeling sexy, Berlin?" and managed to squeeze into seven separate costumes during the ceremony.

'Great deal'

The ceremony was held in the city to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

U2, who won best live act, played a free open-air concert at the Brandenburg Gate to coincide with the event.

As well as performing One - inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall - the band played Sunday, Bloody Sunday, on which they were joined by Jay-Z.

Their concert had run into controversy - after organisers built a two-metre barrier around the venue.

But MTV insisted the fence was part of a "comprehensive security plan" to ensure safety.

Singer Bono said: "Live is where this band lives. It's all that counts ... If you have given us this award I guess that's what you're thinking and it means a great deal to us."

Jay-Z won the best urban award, but told the crowd: "I go to the studio just like the Jonas Brothers, just like Green Day, and we're all just artists at the end of the day."

German band Tokio Hotel were named best group, while Eminem won best male, fending off Robbie Williams and Mika.

Best world stage performance was won by Linkin Park, while Pixie Lott was pronounced the inaugural MTV push artist.

Lott said, via video: "It has been a very amazing, crazy year so I want to say thank you to everyone who has voted for me."

Former X Factor winner Leona Lewis, who had been nominated for best female, performed Happy.

The show was broadcast to more than 500 million homes around the world.

Rihanna warning over Chris Brown attack

2009-11-06T14:40:00.003+07:00

Singer Rihanna has spoken on US TV for the first time about being assaulted by ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, warning that "it could happen to anybody".

The 21-year-old, who was interviewed on ABC's Good Morning America programme, also called her brief reconciliation with Brown "embarrassing".

"I realised that my selfish decision for love could result in some young girl getting killed," she added.

Chris Brown was sentenced to five years' probation after February's assault.

'I didn't do it'

The singer, who has since apologised to fans for his actions, was also given a community service order.

MTV is due to air an interview with Brown on Friday.

Rihanna, who is due to release her new album Rated R on 23 November, told interviewer Diane Sawyer: "I am strong. This happened to me. I didn't cause this. I didn't do it."

The singer added of her decision to reconcile with Brown after the assault: "So far in love, so unconditional, that I went back. That's not what I want to teach people."

The Barbadian-born star admitted that the blaze of publicity that surrounded the attack had been hard to deal with.

"There are a lot of women who have experienced this, but not in public. That made it really difficult. I thought 'there goes my little bit of privacy.'

"It's something that nobody wants anybody to know. So here I am, the whole world knowing," she said.

Rihanna offered advice to women tempted to go back to their partner after an incidence of domestic violence: "Don't react off of love."

Further extracts of ABC's interview with the singer will be screened on Friday in the US.

Michael Jackson film tops US box office

2009-11-02T16:45:00.004+07:00

The film opened simultaneously around the world
Michael Jackson film This Is It has topped the North American box office in its first weekend of release.

The film, which was released worldwide on 28 October, took $21.3m (£13m) over the weekend, taking its five-day haul to $101m (£61.5m).

Columbia Pictures said it now plans to extend the film's two-week limited run in North America until 29 November.

Low-budget horror Paranormal Activity slipped from first-place to number two with $16.5m (£10m).

The sleeper-hit has now taken $84.8m (£51.8m) in its sixth week of release.

US BOX OFFICE TOP FIVE
- This Is It - $21.3m
- Paranormal Activity - $16.5m
- Law Abiding Citizen - $7.3m
- Couples Retreat - $6.1m
- Saw VI - $5.6m

Gerard Butler action film Law Abiding Citizen and romantic comedy Couples Retreat both rose one place to four and five respectively.

Horror sequel Saw VI and Spike Jonze film Where The Wild Things Are both fell three spots to five and six.

There were no other new releases in the chart as film companies shied away from competing with the Halloween weekend.

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama hand out candy at the White House

2009-11-01T14:58:00.002+07:00

Saturday, Oct. 31, 2009 in Washington, on Halloween.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama on Saturday doled out presidential M&Ms and dried fruit mixes to more than 2,000 trick-or-treaters, marking their Halloween at a White House event partly aimed at honoring military families.

Dressed as superheroes, pirates, fairies and skeletons, the kids came in with their parents from Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C., and lined up on the orange-lit White House driveway.

Standing outside the White House front door, the Obamas smiled, chatted and passed out cellophane goody bags that were also filled with a sweet dough butter cookie made by White House pastry chef Bill Yosses. Kids also received a National Park Foundation Ranger activity book.

Mrs. Obama wore furry cat ears and a leopard-patterned top. Obama said the kids looked adorable, as well as his wife, "a very nice looking Catwoman."

A big, stuffed, black spider dangled in a web of string from the top of the portico, and pumpkins had sprouted up around the columns.

Meanwhile, an odd cast of figures wondered around the North Lawn, including skeletons playing musical instruments, walking trees and "Star Wars" characters. The night's arrangements took a month or two to prepare, the White House said.

The loot handed out was just part of the treat for the visiting kids, who were chosen with help from the Education Department.

"He touched my hand," said a beaming Tiera Thomas, 11, of Washington, D.C., after she picked up her candy from President Obama.

The Obamas spent about a half hour passing out candy to trick-or-treaters, ages 6 to 14.

Then they headed inside to the East Room, where the first couple attended a reception for military families and for the moms and dads who work at the White House, along with their kids.

Obama thanked the military members and their families. "We are so grateful to you," he said. "Especially now, a lot of the times, you guys are separated. It's tough. The spouses who are at home are serving just as much as folks who are deployed. So we are just so thrilled that you guys could be here."

The president, dressed in casual clothes, was one of the few not in costume. Even Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was dressed as Darth Vader, the "Star Wars" villain.

It was also the first White House Halloween for the Obamas' daughters, 8-year-old Sasha and 11-year-old Malia.

But the White House would not say what Sasha and Malia were wearing, even though hundreds of other children their ages were in costume in full view of the media. The White House referred back to the first lady's comment to Jay Leno, that finding out what Sasha and Malia were wearing would require "security clearance."

Over the years, the winter holidays have been the ones to get the full treatment at the White House, with Christmas trees and tinsel all around.

The Obamas are not the first, though, to show Halloween spirit.

President George H.W. Bush and first lady Barbara Bush hosted 500 children on Halloween in 1989, loading them up with fun loot but also teaching them about the dangers of drugs. The kids came decked out in costumes; some Secret Service agents came dressed as clowns.

In the Clintons' first year in the White House, the Great Pumpkin returned. A huge orange jack-o'-lantern was formed around the front entrance to the White House, with the front door to the mansion serving as the middle tooth. The first couple's daughter, Chelsea, was 13 at the time and the house was stuffed with pumpkins.
Photo by: AP

Ryan John Seacrest 'stalker' arrested

2009-11-01T14:03:00.003+07:00

Ryan Seacrest says he 'extremely frightened' by Mr Uzomah's actions
American Idol host Ryan Seacrest has been granted a restraining order against a man arrested on Friday on suspicion of stalking the star.

Chidi Benjamin Uzomah Jr, 25, was arrested after he entered the E! Entertainment building in LA.

Court papers say Mr Uzomah was trying to see Seacrest and that he was armed with a knife.

Mr Uzomah is on probation for another recent incident involving Seacrest, in which he attacked the star's guard.

Last month, Mr Uzomah pleaded guilty in Orange County, California to carrying a switchblade knife, assault and battery.

"His aggressive and violent efforts to come into physical contact with me are extremely frightening to me," Seacrest wrote in a court statement.

"They have jeopardised not only my personal safety but also the safety and wellbeing of those around me."

Mr Uzomah was kept in police custody on Friday night, held on $150,000 (£91,000) bail.

A court hearing on whether to grant a three-year restraining order against Mr Uzomah will be held on 17 November.

Seacrest is one of America's biggest TV stars and, as host of American Idol, fronts the country's highest-rated series.

The presenter also has a separate deal with cable company Comcast and is lead anchor on the E! Entertainment channel.

He also has a radio show on LA's KIIS-FM music station.

Kris Allen's Self-Titled Album

2009-10-30T14:47:00.003+07:00

Kris Allen will not drop his eponymous studio album "Kris Allen" across United States until November 17. However, snippets of its thirteen tracks have been made available for stream on Amazon Germany.

Spotted missing from the preview is a song titled "Send Me All Your Angels" which is co-written by Kris and Chris Daughtry. It is set to be offered as an exclusive bonus track for those buying the album on Walmart.

Recently, Kris Allen has showcased three of his fresh materials at Dolphin's Tailgate Stage Sunday, October 25. He sang about fighting to save a rocky relationship in "Before We Come Undone", danced to the groovy beat of "Written All Over My Face" and continued with another funky tune with "Can't Stay Away".

Kris' another scheduled gig will take place on December 11 at New York City's Z100 Christmas Ball. He will be joined by David Archuleta, Jordin Sparks, Taylor Swift, John Mayer, Justin Bieber, The Fray, Boys Like Girls, Pitbull, Owl City and Jay Sean.