American pop diva Lady Gaga will appear via a video patch on a popular Japanese music competition on New Year's Eve, public broadcaster NHK said.
The eccentric star's appearance on Kohaku Uta Gassen, an annual singing competition between male and female entertainers, will include her singing and delivering encouraging messages regarding Japan's devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The catastrophe killed about 20,000 people on Japan's north-east coast and sparked the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, leading to a plunge in visitors to the country.
The songstress visited Japan twice after the disaster and called on tourists from around the world to follow suit. She also attended events to support reconstruction of disaster-hit areas.
A song and message from the singer will be recorded shortly before the show, NHK said.
Vogue's vast archives go online
Bookshelves groaning under the weight of every issue of American Vogue ever published since 1892 - and there have been about 2,800 of them - will now see a lightening to their load.
An online Vogue archive is being pitched to fashion insiders for whom rummaging through back issues for inspiration is an everyday part of the job, reported the Associated Foreign Press.
But at US$1,575 (Dh5,785) a year, enjoying instant access to nearly 120 years of a single magazine title - about 400,000 pages - doesn't come cheap.
The archive's real value lies in how every photograph, every advertisement and - so far, from October 1988 - every garment has been assigned a "tag" or search label.
So someone looking for a pleated dress by Balenciaga from an era when pleats were all the rage will be swept back to the September 15, 1939, issue and an otherwise hard-to-find crisp line drawing of a black number from the Spanish couturier.
Graphs at the foot of the website reflect the ebb and flow of a particular trend. Corduroy, for instance, spikes in popularity in the 1910s, then subsides before its comeback in the 1970s.
Louis Vuitton sues The Hangover for fake bag
Luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton is suing Warner Bros for using knock-off LV luggage in The Hangover Part II, released earlier this year.
The unauthorised product placement took place in an airport scene in which Alan (Zach Galifianakis) tells Stu (Ed Helms) not to mess with his leather bags. "Careful! That is a Louis Vuitton," he says, pronouncing the "s" in the brand name aloud.
Turns out the bags were fakes, made by the Chinese American company Diophy, which manufactures faux luxury bags.
LV wants a cut of the film's profits, which earned $581 million from worldwide box office sales. They've also requested an injunction prohibiting Warner Bros from distributing the film until the scene is removed.
This is the fourth suit filed against The Hangover sequel. Mike Tyson's tattoo artist sued the movie for Ed Helms's fake tribal face ink in the film, a stuntman sued the film studio for a set injury and a screenwriter filed a plagiarism lawsuit.
Kardashians deny sweatshop allegations
Reality TV's first family are preparing to sue everyone who has claimed their clothing line is manufactured in sweatshops in China, the gossip website TMZ reported.
The Kardashians, led by mother Kris Jenner, are prepping for a legal attack to accusations made by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights head Charles Kernaghan, who appeared on TMZ Live on Wednesday, saying that the Kardashian brand may unwittingly be sponsoring child labour, based on their years of research on the Chinese manufacturing industry.
The family is also suing Star magazine for a recent cover that featured the headline: Kardashian Sweatshop Scandal, which Jenner claims is unfair and libellous. Star published a report alleging that several of the family's lifestyle brands are manufactured in sweatshops that employ under age and overworked workers.
Last week, the workers' rights organisation China Labor Watch published an investigative report that claimed that fashion brand Bebe had products manufactured in sweatshops, including clothing and accessories from the K-Dash by Kardashian brand.
"As far as I know, the factories have nothing terrible going on at all ... very well policed and meet factory standards," Jenner told TMZ.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The Birkin bag is made by Hermès.
It is named after actress and singer Jane Birkin
Noone from Hermès will go on record to say how much a new Birkin costs, how long one would have to wait to get one, and how many bags are actually made each year.
Brief scores:
Day 2
England: 277 & 19-0
West Indies: 154
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
U19 WORLD CUP, WEST INDIES
UAE group fixtures (all in St Kitts)
- Saturday 15 January: UAE beat Canada by 49 runs
- Thursday 20 January: v England
- Saturday 22 January: v Bangladesh
UAE squad:
Alishan Sharafu (captain), Shival Bawa, Jash Giyanani, Sailles
Jaishankar, Nilansh Keswani, Aayan Khan, Punya Mehra, Ali Naseer, Ronak Panoly,
Dhruv Parashar, Vinayak Raghavan, Soorya Sathish, Aryansh Sharma, Adithya
Shetty, Kai Smith
ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
Wicked: For Good
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater
Rating: 4/5
Third Test
Day 3, stumps
India 443-7 (d) & 54-5 (27 ov)
Australia 151
India lead by 346 runs with 5 wickets remaining
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
Despacito's dominance in numbers
Released: 2017
Peak chart position: No.1 in more than 47 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Lebanon
Views: 5.3 billion on YouTube
Sales: With 10 million downloads in the US, Despacito became the first Latin single to receive Diamond sales certification
Streams: 1.3 billion combined audio and video by the end of 2017, making it the biggest digital hit of the year.
Awards: 17, including Record of the Year at last year’s prestigious Latin Grammy Awards, as well as five Billboard Music Awards
A list of the animal rescue organisations in the UAE
Brief scores:
Liverpool 3
Mane 24', Shaqiri 73', 80'
Manchester United 1
Lingard 33'
Man of the Match: Fabinho (Liverpool)
England v South Africa schedule:
- First Test: At Lord's, England won by 219 runs
- Second Test: July 14-18, Trent Bridge, Nottingham, 2pm
- Third Test: The Oval, London, July 27-31, 2pm
- Fourth Test: Old Trafford, Manchester, August 4-8
SERIE A FIXTURES
Friday Sassuolo v Torino (Kick-off 10.45pm UAE)
Saturday Atalanta v Sampdoria (5pm),
Genoa v Inter Milan (8pm),
Lazio v Bologna (10.45pm)
Sunday Cagliari v Crotone (3.30pm)
Benevento v Napoli (6pm)
Parma v Spezia (6pm)
Fiorentina v Udinese (9pm)
Juventus v Hellas Verona (11.45pm)
Monday AC Milan v AS Roma (11.45pm)
UAE jiu-jitsu squad
Men: Hamad Nawad and Khalid Al Balushi (56kg), Omar Al Fadhli and Saeed Al Mazroui (62kg), Taleb Al Kirbi and Humaid Al Kaabi (69kg), Mohammed Al Qubaisi and Saud Al Hammadi (70kg), Khalfan Belhol and Mohammad Haitham Radhi (85kg), Faisal Al Ketbi and Zayed Al Kaabi (94kg)
Women: Wadima Al Yafei and Mahra Al Hanaei (49kg), Bashayer Al Matrooshi and Hessa Al Shamsi (62kg)
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