Refast wallpaper: June 2011

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Lowry's Hawker's Cart sells for £555,000

Lawry painting

A Lowry painting, sold by The Royal Scottish Academy to raise money to buy new works, has fetched £555,000.

Money raised from the sale of The Hawker's Cart, a typical Lowry street scene, will create an endowment fund to buy key works by Scottish artists.

"It may take some time but we can now make a start," said academy secretary Arthur Watson.

"Our decision to sell the painting in Scotland has been fully justified."

The academy - an independent, privately-funded collective of artists and architects - said it had identified a number of Scottish painters missing from its current collection.

The 1929 Lowry work, depicting an urban landscape in northern England, sold at Lyon and Turnbull auctioneers in Edinburgh.

The auction house said it was "delighted" with the result.

Lancashire-born Lowry, who died aged 88 in 1976, was known for his depictions of working-class life.

Last month, his 1949 work The Football Match, sold for £5.6m at Christie's in London, a record auction price for the artist.

Source : BBC, June 03, 2011, Friday

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A five-time Grammy Award winner Shania Twain honored on Hollywood Walk of Fame

Shania Twain

Shania Twain, Canadian country music singing star a five-time Grammy Award winner, received the 2,442nd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday, capping a successful career as a singer and a songwriter.

Calling the dedication "a small miracle," Twain said at an event in front of the W Hollywood hotel that she still did not know "why I am here today."

"I mean, why is a girl from Timmins, Ontario, standing here, getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?" she said. "I really don't know."

Twain, 45, was joined by actress Bo Derek, a Golden Globe nominee and model, and other entertainers and fans at the ceremony held roughly a month after the release of her best-selling memoir "From This Moment On" and the premiere of a documentary series "Why Not? With Shania Twain" on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network on May 8.

Born Eilleen Regina Edwards on Aug. 28, 1965 into a poor family in Windsor, Ontario, Edwards changed her last name to Twain as she, along with her two sisters, was adopted by her mother's second husband. Twain began singing at bars when she was eight years old trying to help her family make ends meet. She wrote her first songs when she was 10 years old and performed on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. television series the "Tommy Hunter Show" at the age of 13.

Twain, who changed her first name to Shania in the early 1990s, released her debut album, a self-titled production in 1993. The album, reached 67th on the U.S. country albums chart, received positive reviews from critics.

The singer first came to prominence with her second album, "The Women In Me." The 1995 album, unlike her first, featured songs she wrote herself and hit over 12 million copies, shattering the record previously held by "Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits," and winning a Grammy Award in 1996 for best country album.

Shania Twain

"Come on Over," her third album which was released in 1997, sold 20 million copies in the United States, the most by a woman in any genre of music and the best-selling country album of all time.

Twain is also a successful songwriter with 27 BMI Songwriter awards. She is the second best-selling artist in Canada, behind fellow Canadian Celine Dion.

Source : Xinhua, June 02, 2011, Thursday

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Friday, June 3, 2011

"Glee" star Jane Lynch to host 2011 Emmy Awards

"Glee" star Jane Lynch will host the Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony in September, organizers of the television industry's top honors said on Thursday.

Lynch, 50, won an Emmy last year for her role as scheming high school cheerleader coach Sue Sylvester on the Fox musical comedy series.

The actress said she was "tickled pink" to be hosting the 2011 ceremony, to be televised live from Los Angeles on September 18.

"I'm looking forward to singing, dancing and sporting my finest tracksuit," she quipped in a statement.

Mark Burnett, the executive producer of the Emmy Awards show, said Lynch was his first choice to host the show.

"She has incredible comedic timing, and is a charismatic, talented actress whose energy leaps off the screen and stage. I am thrilled and excited to have her as our host," Burnett said in a statement.

Nominations for the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards will be announced on July 14. The awards will be handed out on September 18 in a ceremony broadcast on Fox.

Last year's ceremony was hosted by comedian Jimmy Fallon, giving the show its largest TV audience since 2006.

Source : Reuters, June 02, 2011, Thursday

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Alleged rape victim flees Libya

Eman al-Obeidy

Eman al-Obeidy, who garnered worldwide attention for her vocal rape allegations against the regime of Moammar Gadhafi, says she has fled Libya, fearing for her safety.

Al-Obeidy told CNN that she crossed into Tunisia on Thursday with the help of a defecting military officer and his family.

She said she had left Tripoli in a military car, wearing a head cover that hid everything except one eye.

Al-Obeidy said she entered at the Dahibah border crossing disguised "in the local manner" and was not challenged. She described the trip from Tripoli as "very tiring."

Along the road to Tunisia, the car she was in was stopped several times at checkpoints, al-Obeidy said. The military officer would show his permit, and they would be allowed to continue, she said.

Al-Obeidy said she crossed into Tunisia using a refugee document.

European diplomats drove her from the border region to Tunis and are giving her sanctuary, there while she considers her future, according to Western diplomatic sources.

She said she was afraid she was being followed and might still be in danger, adding that she hoped she could obtain protection from a Western government.

"I still do not know what I am going to do. Of course I'd like to see my family," she said.

Al-Obeidy's mother learned about her daughter's escape after seeing news reports on TV, her father told CNN from the family's hometown of Tobruk, Libya. Atiq Al-Obeidy said that his wife then called him, and both parents were overjoyed.

Atiq Al-Obeidy admitted he was "not optimistic" that his daughter would be able to safely leave Libya, thinking forces loyal to Gadhafi "would do the worst to her, given his past."

"I am extremely delighted, and I will be looking forward to more information about how she was able to escape," the woman's father said.

Eman al-Obeidy received worldwide attention on March 26 when she burst into the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli, while international journalists staying there were having breakfast. She told reporters she had been taken from a checkpoint east of Tripoli and held against her will for two days while being beaten and raped by 15 men.

In an interview with CNN last month, she said she felt defeated and lived in fear that she would be punished gravely for her words.

"I usually get harassed when I have to show my Identification card to government officials somewhere, and they find out who I am and that I have put complaints forward against Gadhafi's people," she said. "They humiliate me to the point where other people gather around and start saying that it is shameful to treat a Libyan woman that way."

The legal proceedings in her rape case have not gone far, she said last month. She also had not been able to go home.

Source : CNN

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Thursday, June 2, 2011

New Hollywood couple alert: Leo & Blake

Leo & Blake

The "Inception" star Leonardo DiCaprio and the "Gossip Girl" beauty Blake Lively have been spotted wrapped around one another during a recent trip to Italy, according to media reports.

At the Cannes Film Festival, the pair was spotted on Stenphen Spielberg's yacht, and the photos of the two are seen everywhere on the Internet.

A source spilled that Leo wants to start a family since he sees his friend's happy parenting. However, Leo's ex, supermodel Bar Refaeli told him she's not ready for that.

Source : Xinhuan, June 02, 2011

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Blake Lively: Those nude pics are fake

Blake Lively

Photos claiming to be of a naked Blake Lively spread across the Web Tuesday, but a rep for the actress says they’re not really her.

According to Us Weekly, the images show a blonde woman taking photos of herself in the buff, but the 23-year-old “Gossip Girl” star’s rep says Lively hasn’t done such a thing.

"The photos of Blake Lively which have just surfaced on various websites including Perez Hilton and Zap2it are 100 percent fake," her rep tells Us. “Blake has never taken nude photos of herself.”

To top it off, she’s also pursuing “legal action against the publication which initially published these photographs and any other outlets that republish them in any manner,” her rep says.

Source : CNN, June 01, 2011

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Wednesday, June 1, 2011

'Real Housewives' Zolciak gives birth to a boy

Kim Zolciak

"Real Housewives of Atlanta" star -- and aspiring singer -- Kim Zolciak announced late Tuesday that she has given birth to a boy.

Zolciak's due date was sometime in early June. And true to her single, Kroy Jagger Biermann came on time.

The reality show star announced the baby's birth via a post on her Twitter account.

"@biermann71 and I are happy to announce the birth of our son today Kroy Jagger Biermann is healthy & beautiful We are so in love!" the post read.

The newborn is the namesake of Zolciak's boyfriend, Atlanta Falcons defensive end Kroy Biermann. Viewers saw the pair meet in a November 14 episode of the Bravo television show.

She has two daughters from a previous marriage.

Zolciak shot to fame for her role in the "Real Housewives of Atlanta," which chronicles the lives of six "fabulous women from Atlanta's social elite," as the Bravo website put it.

The show remains the most popular in Bravo's "Housewives" franchise. It returns for a fourth season in October.

Zolciak has tried to parlay her show success into a career in music.

Her first single, "Tardy for the Party" -- released in 2009 -- boasted lines such as: "Don't be tardy for the party. Hurry up baby don't be late."

She followed up the following year with the single, "Google Me."

"Research me, you'll find me. Click them keys and Google me!"

Source : CNN, June 01, 2011

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Lady Gaga album sells 1.1 million copies in first week

Flamboyant pop star Lady Gaga has scored her first No. 1 album in the United States after a 99-cent promotion by Amazon.com sent the much-hyped release past the rare million-copy mark in its debut week.

According to sales data published on Tuesday by Billboard magazine, "Born This Way" sold 1.11 million copies during the week ended May 29.

It marks the biggest first-week sales total since rapper 50 Cent's "The Massacre" debuted to 1.14 million copies in March 2005. The last album to break the million mark was country starlet Taylor Swift's "Speak Now," which started with 1.01 million copies last November.

In all, just 17 albums have sold more than one million copies in their first week since tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan began collecting point-of-sales data in 1991. Boy band 'N Sync holds the first-week record with 2.4 million copies for its 2000 album "No Strings Attached."

Billboard estimated that Amazon downloads accounted for upward of 440,000 downloads of "Born This Way." Heavy demand crashed Amazon's servers when the online retailer launched its one-day-only promotion last Monday. The firm gave fans another chance to get the album for 99 cents on Thursday.

Billboard said music industry observers had been expecting the album to sell between 650,000 and 700,000 copies before the Amazon promotion kicked in.

Amazon undertook the money-losing promotion to steal business from Apple Inc's iTunes, which dominates the market for digital music downloads.

Overall digital downloads for "Born This Way" totaled a record-breaking 662,000 copies, Billboard said. The old record of 288,000 downloads was held by Coldplay's 2008 album "Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends."

"Born This Way" marks Lady Gaga's second full-length album for Interscope Records, a unit of Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group. The 25-year-old New Yorker's 2008 debut "The Fame" peaked at No. 2 and has sold 4.2 million copies to date in the United States.

The singer, famed for her outrageous costumes and lavish stage shows, has been ubiquitous on the promotional trail in recent weeks. Among her stops were the Cannes Film Festival in France, the U.S. variety show "Saturday Night Live," and a London newspaper where she served as guest editor.

But is "Born This Way" any good? Critics said it lacked subtlety, but were divided on whether this was a good thing. Rolling Stone described the album as "disarmingly great" while the Los Angeles Times said it draws from "the worst tendencies of the last decade of dance music."

Source : Reuters, May 31, 2011

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Blake Lively "nude" pictures fake, publicist says

Blake Lively

A series of widely circulated photographs purporting to show "Gossip Girl" actress Blake Lively posing naked are "100 percent fake," her spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The Internet was abuzz late in the day as the five photos of a naked busty blond taking snapshots of herself with an iPhone in front of a bathroom mirror spread among major gossip websites.

"Blake Lively won't be happy about this," said celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, noting that the 23-year-old starlet has just reportedly started dating Leonardo DiCaprio.

Rival site Zap2It, noting the early-generation iPhone and different shaped nose, suggested the pictures were several years old.

In four of the pictures, the woman's face was partially concealed by her phone. The fifth was too blurry to make a definitive call. But a spokeswoman for the squeaky-clean actress was in doubt.

"The photos of Blake Lively which have just surfaced on various websites ... are 100 percent FAKE," the spokeswoman said. "Blake has never taken nude photos of herself."

Moreover, Lively will take legal action against any outlets that publish the photos, the spokeswoman added.

Lively rose to fame in the teen television soap "Gossip Girl," and had a sex scene in the 2010 crime thriller "The Town." Earlier this year she signed on as the new face of French fashion house Chanel's Mademoiselle handbag ad campaign.

Source : Reuters, June 01, 2011

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