The O.J. Files

Reese Witherspoon Talks Maternity Style

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:51:00 +0000

Richard Belzer -- Saluting Hitler!?

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:37:00 +0000

Challenges As 'Teen Set on Fire' Trial Nears

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 20:28:00 +0000

James Van Der Beek's favorite actor! -- Hollywood.TV

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Wed, 30 May 2012 18:52:00 +0000

Toddler Beaten to Death With Game Controller

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Sat, 26 May 2012 21:41:00 +0000

Britney Brings 'X Factor' to Cowell's Show

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:38:00 +0000

Katie Holmes Gets Suri Cruise a Teddy Bear

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:58:00 +0000

Donald Driver's Criminal Past

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:22:00 +0000

Jennifer Love Hewitt Crushing on Adam Levine?

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:01:00 +0000

Tony Dovolani Slams Dancing With Kate Gosselin

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:44:00 +0000

Hilary Duff's Big Baby News! It's a Boy!

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 19:14:00 +0000

THE LIST: TV Shows Gone Too Soon

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 19:12:00 +0000

Girl, 3, Thrown From Texas Carnival Ride, Survives Caught on Tape (2012)

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

ShowBiz Minute: Oscars, Badu, Spader

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:06:00 +0000

Five Corrie characters under suspicion for Frank Foster's murder

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:04:00 +0000

Uma Thurman Pregnant with Third Child

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:55:00 +0000

Sean Young Speaks Out About Her Arrest

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:54:00 +0000

Sharon Stone on Elizabeth Taylor

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:19:00 +0000

Time Lapse: Oscars' Huge Night

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:08:00 +0000

Celebs at Oscar After Parties Plus Sean Young's Arrest!

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:04:00 +0000

Angelina Jolie cuts Bosnia filming on permit woes

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:58:00 +0000

SARAJEVO (Reuters Life!) – Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has cut back on filming plans in Bosnia for her directorial debut after problems with permits, a local producer said on Wednesday.

The film crew had begun shooting exterior shots at a former military barracks in Sarajevo on Wednesday, but Jolie and the film's actors were absent, Edin Sarkic of the Scout Film production told Reuters.

"The American producers have decided that scenes at 12 locations planned in Sarajevo should be shot in Budapest after the permit had been canceled and then reinstated," Sarkic said.

A Bosnian minister in mid-October canceled the filming permit, citing incomplete paperwork after he met with female victims of the Bosnian war, who objected to what they said were details of the plot for the untitled film.

The filming of exterior shots for the movie, whose narrative takes place in wartime Bosnia, was set to end on Friday.

Jolie has said the film is a love story between a Serbian man and a Bosnian Muslim woman on the eve of the 1992-95 war in which 100,000 people died.

The Oscar-winning actress asked women war victims in a letter to hold judgment until they had seen the film in which "there are many twists in the plot that address the sensitive nature of the relationship between the main characters."

Sarkic said that Jolie, who was already filming in Budapest, has said she would come to Sarajevo and speak to the Women Victims of War association, whose president Bakira Hasecic has been the most vocal opponent of Jolie's film project.

Jolie first arrived in Bosnia in April with partner Brad Pitt to visit refugees in eastern parts of the country as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. Her visit resulted in the construction of dozen new homes for returnees.

Board recommends against Wayne Newton museum plan

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:18:00 +0000

LAS VEGAS – An advisory board is recommending against entertainer Wayne Newton's proposal to build a museum and bus tourists to his sprawling estate southeast of Las Vegas.

Dozens of speakers aired opinions before the Paradise Town Advisory Board gave a thumbs-down Tuesday to Newton's proposal to develop his 38-acre Casa de Shenandoah compound as a tourist attraction.

The Clark County Commission is due to take up the matter Nov. 17.

The Las Vegas Strip headliner didn't attend the meeting, although he hosted a neighborhood meeting in September. The Las Vegas Sun reported Newton was represented instead by a lawyer and a prominent area land use consultant.

Board members said they were concerned the project would draw too much traffic and hurt the surrounding neighborhood. It's zoned for rural neighborhood preservation.

___

Information from: Las Vegas Sun, http://www.lasvegassun.com

China, Japan leaders pledge progress on gas dispute

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:29:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — The leaders of China and Japan pledged Monday to get back on track on a 2008 agreement to jointly develop a gas field near disputed islands that have been a thorn in relations, officials said.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and Chinese President Hu Jintao spoke on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in Washington, the latest meeting between the two as ties steadily improve between Asia's two largest economies.

Japan and China, two of the world's biggest energy importers, struck a deal in June 2008 to end a bitter spat over four Chinese gas fields in the East China Sea that Tokyo feared may extend into its exclusive economic zone.

Under the deal, Japan agreed to invest in one field, jointly develop an area near another and continue talks with China on the remaining three while freezing further development.

But the agreement has remained just on paper, amid charges in the Japanese press that China has violated it.

Hu told Hatoyama in the meeting that "China's commitment to the June 2008 remains firm and unchanged," Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama told reporters.

The two leaders also discussed the latest developments on North Korea and expressed hope that their mutual neighbor would return to six-nation talks on ending its nuclear program, Kodama said.

Kodama said Hatoyama voiced appreciation for China's recent arrest of a factory worker accused of poisoning frozen dumplings destined for Japan. Ten people fell ill in Japan including a small child, causing a public furor.

Hatoyama pledged cooperation to promote food safety with China and said he "certainly hopes that a full accounting of what has happened on this issue will be completed soon," Kodama said.

Hatoyama, whose center-left coalition swept out long-ruling conservatives in August, is considered conciliatory to China on issues that have long divided the neighbors such as World War II history.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency said Hu was "happy" to meet Hatoyama, "who is an old friend of China."

US reduces troop numbers in quake-hit Haiti

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:49:00 +0000

PORT-AU-PRINCE — The US military has pulled thousands of its troops from quake-hit Haiti because aid operations have improved, a general said, as relief workers raced to boost conditions at squalid camps.

There were growing calls to speed up efforts to provide tarps and tents ahead of the rainy season, which threatens to bring more misery to the estimated 1.2 million left homeless by the massive earthquake a month ago.

President Rene Preval stressed the urgent need for shelter in a meeting with visiting USAID chief Rajiv Shah and US General Douglas Fraser on Saturday, said Shah, who pledged to boost distribution of shelter material.

Fraser said troop numbers were now down to 13,000 after a post-earthquake high of more than 20,000, while adding that the Haitian government was taking back control of the Port-au-Prince airport during daylight hours.

The United States had assumed operations there in the chaotic atmosphere immediately after the quake, which killed more than 200,000 people.

"There are roughly 13,000 US military men and women supporting the efforts here in Haiti," Fraser said.

"The international aid and relief efforts have improved and increased in Haiti and we've seen an ability to transition those capabilities to other needs around the world."

Fraser would not provide specifics on how long he expected US troops to remain in Haiti, saying it would depend on needs in the Caribbean nation, which was already the poorest country in the Americas before the quake.

Many have warned that the lack of shelter is the most significant threat facing Haitians with the rainy season starting around May. Conditions at makeshift camps for the homeless are already fast becoming major health concerns.

The UN humanitarian coordinator, Kim Bolduc, said on Friday that the sprawling Champ de Mars camp across from the destroyed National Palace has "turned into an almost dangerous area" due to poor sanitation.

Some 16,000 people are jammed into an area that should hold up to 6,000, she said.

John Holmes, UN emergency relief coordinator, said 20,000 latrines were needed at camps and only five to 10 percent had been constructed.

The effort to provide shelter has been criticized by many Haitians as coming far too late, and protests over the stumbling aid distribution have been held in various parts of the capital over the past couple of weeks.

The deputy head of the UN mission in Haiti said Friday that many of the homeless are unlikely to have "good shelter" before the rainy season, though aid workers were hoping to provide everyone with some kind of material.

"No matter what, though, it's not going to be pretty," Anthony Banbury told AFP.

"No one should be under any illusions that all million people who have lost their homes are going to be living in comfortable, sturdy shelter by May 1. That's just not going to happen."

Food distribution has worked better in recent days, officials say, with an estimated total of 2.3 million people now having been given some sort of food.

But Haitians still say the aid effort has fallen short.

Richmond Delinois, a 35-year-old owner of a brick-making company, did not lose his house, but some of his workers did and are now living in his yard.

"How long are we going to remain like this?" he said. "The NGOs come, but no one tells us anything."

Meanwhile, the case of 10 Americans charged with kidnapping in the wake of the earthquake here took another turn, with El Salvador police saying they are looking into a man presented as their Dominican lawyer, Jorge Puello.

El Salvador police said they were working to determine if Puello could in fact be Jorge Torres Orellana, who is wanted in the Central American country for allegations of running an international sex trafficking ring.

The ring lured women and girls from the Caribbean and Central America into prostitution with bogus offers of modeling jobs, according to Interpol, which has issued a wanted persons alert for Orellana.

Four US troops, French soldier killed in Afghanistan

noreply@blogger.com (Daryl Lorette) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:59:00 +0000

KABUL — Four US troops and a French soldier were killed in separate incidents in Afghanistan on Wednesday as the UN reported the deadliest year yet for civilians in a spiralling Taliban-led insurgency.

Two US soldiers died in an IED (improvised explosive device) strike in the east of the country. Another died in fighting, also in the east, and a fourth died of wounds suffered in an IED explosion in the south.

The French defence ministry said a non-commissioned officer died on the road between Bagram and Nijrab in the east, the third French soldier to die in as many days.

Meanwhile, four Afghan military engineers and a civilian were killed when a bomb device they were trying to defuse went off in the eastern province of Khost, said Zahir Wardak, a senior military official.

The latest fatalities come a day after seven people died in violence at a protest against an alleged desecration of the Koran by foreign forces, officials said.

"Two ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) service members from the United States were killed today as a result of an IED (improvised explosive device) strike in eastern Afghanistan," the force said in a statement.

A later ISAF statement said: "An ISAF service member from the United States was killed today during an engagement with insurgents in eastern Afghanistan. In a separate engagement another ISAF service member from the United States died of his wounds today as a result of an IED strike in southern Afghanistan."

The deaths took to around 20 the number of foreign forces killed in Afghanistan since the start of the year, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by the independent icasualties.org website.

In southern Kandahar province, a hub of Taliban activity, a militant detonated a truck bomb near government installations in Daman district, injuring three police and as many civilians, the interior ministry said.

Civilians are increasingly being caught in the crossfire of the Afghan war, the United Nations said in a report on Wednesday, with 2,412 killed in 2009, the highest toll since the US-led invasion in late 2001.

This is up 14 percent from the 2,118 civilians who died in 2008, and the vast majority of the dead were killed in Taliban attacks, the UN's Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in its report.

UNAMA's head of human rights Norah Niland said 67 percent of last year's civilian deaths, or 1,630, were in insurgent attacks, while pro-government forces including NATO and US troops were responsible for 25 percent, or 596 civilian deaths.

The deadliest months were August, with 333 deaths, and September, with 336, she told reporters.

"The good news is that, in part, the number of casualties is not keeping pace (with) warfare incidents," Niland said, referring to an escalation in fighting as the insurgency has spread its shadow across the country.

NATO had "reduced the number of air strikes in residential areas and the figures of casualties as a result of air strikes has come down significantly," she said.

But an influx of foreign troops over the course of 2010, as a new counter-insurgency strategy takes hold, meant "much more warfare and that's bad news for Afghan civilians," Niland said.

Civilian casualties are a source of tension between the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and the international forces fighting the insurgency.

Karzai uses the issue to press home his authority, draw support for his unpopular government while criticising the tactics of the foreign forces.

The report's release comes a day after seven people were killed during protests sparked by rumours foreign troops had desecrated the Koran. The toll was given by an official, blaming Taliban for inciting the unrest.

Investigators sent to the southern province of Helmand found that no desecration of the Muslim holy book had taken place in the military operation Monday, said Daud Ahmadi, spokesman for the provincial governor.

It followed earlier reports that nine people were killed during the demonstration in Gamsir district.

The United States and NATO have 113,000 troops leading the fight against the Taliban, with another 40,000 being deployed over the course of this year.