Category: people

“20,000 qualified Africans leave the continent each year. Engineers, lawyers and doctors move to countries where the food is strange, the winters are cold and the people as well. Many Africans prefer to live abroad than with the HIV infection rate of 40 percent seen in Swaziland, the rape that occurs every 30 seconds in South Africa or the genocide that left 800,000 dead in Rwanda.”

“[He] was one of the greatest stage actors of the past century, especially associated with his roles in the plays of Tom Stoppard. But a combination of his enigmatic privacy and low profile on film – he cropped up a lot without dominating a movie – meant that he remained largely unknown to the wider public.”

“They are young, talented and driven: artists who want to make their mark on the world. You see them in New York more than any other city in the country, and their New York is different from yours and mine. It’s hipper and faster paced, open to experience. If they want to see a folk-singing duo, and their iPhones tell them to cross two highway lanes on foot to get there, consider them crossed.”

“Even on the day of his release, officers reminded Ai he could still face 10 years in jail for inciting subversion to state power – a vaguely-worded charge often used against dissidents – the source said. He had to agree to conditions including no media interviews, no meetings with foreigners, no use of the internet and no interaction with human rights advocates for one year from his return home.”

“He’s traditionally been one of the humanitarian voices, the voice of social and political justice in American poetry.”

“Veteran US director Abel Ferrara arrived in Switzerland’s lakeside resort of Locarno last week to receive the highest honour awarded by the town’s 64-year-old film festival – the Leopard of Honour. He ended up the butt of catcalls and whistles of anger after outraging festivalgoers” – by singing to them (at length).

“It wasn’t my idea to sing. I was asked to. But give someone like me a microphone and a captive audience of thousands, and what do you expect? … I thought they were calling for an encore.”

“To be eligible, applicants must have won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe or an Emmy Award or have been nominated in the five years before applying. The government has set aside 300 spots for anyone who meets the requirements.”

“Starting at the top left of a canvas measuring a little over four by six feet, and using acrylic paint, he used a fine brush (No. 0) to inscribe 20,000 to 30,000 white numerals … in neat rows that ended at the bottom right corner. Each succeeding canvas, or ‘detail’ as he called it, picked up where the previous one left off. As of July 2004, he had reached 5.5 million.”

“World-renowned American cartoonist Robert Crumb has pulled out of his headline appearance at the Graphic arts festival in Sydney later this month. He made the decision after being described in a Sydney newspaper as a ‘self-confessed sex pervert’ and a ‘very warped human being’.”