Osama bin Laden's niece bares much in GQ spread for Jan. 2006 issue
'My values are like yours,’ she says, distancing herself from al-Qaida leader
NEW YORK - Osama bin Laden’s niece, in an interview with GQ magazine in which she appears scantily clad, says she has nothing in common with the al-Qaida leader and simply wants acceptance by Americans.
“Everyone relates me to that man, and I have nothing to do with him,” Wafah Dufour, the daughter of bin Laden’s half brother, Yeslam Binladin, says in the January edition of the magazine, referring to the al-Qaida leader.
“I want to be accepted here, but I feel that everybody’s judging me and rejecting me,” said the California-born Dufour, a musician and law school graduate who lives in New York. “Come on, where’s the American spirit? Accept me. I want to be embraced, because my values are like yours. And I’m here. I’m not hiding.”
Dufour, who adopted her mother’s maiden name after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that have been blamed on bin Laden, appears in several provocative photos in the magazine.
The pictures are likely to be considered obscene by conservative Muslims in and outside of Saudi Arabia where women are required to be veiled.
Asked if she would like to perform her music in the Middle East, Dufour says her mother, Carmen Dufour, would be too afraid that “someone would want to kill me.”
“Listen, I would love to raise consciousness. Maybe women could hear the songs and realize that I’m doing my dream and hopefully they can, too,” she said.
Yeslam and Osama are among 54 children of the late Saudi construction magnate Mohammed bin Laden and his 22 wives. The extended family includes several hundred people.
Binladin, who received Swiss citizenship in 2001, has condemned his half brother “for his acts and his convictions.” He intentionally spells his name differently from his half brother.
In the interview, Dufour says she would not date a fundamentalist Muslim and that she cried hysterically when she witnessed the attacks on New York while staying with her mother in Geneva.
The previews and television ads for "Aeon Flux" are misleading. They make the film appear like a clone of "The Matrix" or perhaps even "Demoltion Man," with a bit of stereotypical Hollywood revenge story thrown in. I say this is a sign that the studio is mismarketing this flick, as they made me think this was yet another example of movie makers buying a property and "improving" upon it by dumping everything that made it cool, so I almost didn't go see it.
Tape of Michael Jackson's anti-semitic rant released
Pop superstar Michael Jackson must apologize for allegedly making a series of anti-Semitic comments on a voicemail message, the US Anti-Defamation League (ADL) demanded on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, a tape purportedly featuring Jackson leaving a message for his former advisor Dieter Wiesner two years ago was aired on TV show Good Morning America. On it, the man - alleged to be Jackson - says, "They (Jews) suck. They're like leeches... I'm so tired of it... they start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars and everything. End up penniless. It is conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose."
In response, ADL director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement: "Michael Jackson has an anti-Semitic streak and hasn't learned from his past mistakes. It seems every time he has a problem in his life, he blames it on Jews."
In his 1996 song "They Don't Care About Us," Jackson sang, "Jew me, sue me," and "kick me, kike me". At the time, the singer apologized, explaining the lyrics had been intended as anti-racist.
The controversial tape was released by Wiesner's lawyer Howard King. On Monday Wiesner filed a $64 million lawsuit against Jackson, claiming fraud and breach of contract. Jackson had no comment yesterday, according to his spokeswoman Raymone K. Bain, writes the New York Daily News.
Safety test burns club to ground
A strip club owner burned his club to the ground while trying to prove it was fire-proof to health and safety inspectors.
Benedict Frank, owner of the Cabaret Club in Kienberg, Switzerland, started the blaze to show how fire-proof it was when he was visited by safety inspectors.
They had questioned whether his decorations were in accordance with fire safety rules, and he used his lighter to set fire to the paper ornaments in a bid to prove there was nothing to worry about.
But the fire quickly took off and spread throughout the club and the neighbouring restaurant - burning both establishments to the ground.
According to local police no one was hurt in the fire, but the damage amounts to more than £300,000.
Conman caught - on reality TV
A Russian fraudster has been jailed after one of his victims spotted him on a reality TV show.
Alexei Adeev, 26, was jailed for four and a half years after a woman he had cheated out of £1,100 in a property scam spotted him on the Russian reality show House-2: Build Your Love.
The woman, not named for privacy reasons, said Adeev, who in the past served a jail sentence for car theft and bribing an official, had fled with the money after she gave it to him as a deposit for a house in Smolensk.
Adeev's jail sentence comes just months after Russian MPs called for the reality show to be banned and its hosts put on trial for organised prostitution and pimping.
They said the show, which aims to pair off contestants by the end of the series, was doing serious damage to the morals of Russia's youth.
They said the show's rules encouraged participants to have sex live on air and pointed out that one of the show's participants, Yelena Berkova, had a past career as a porn star.
'Halloween' Producer Akkad Dies in Jordan
By SHAFIKA MATTAR (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
November 11, 2005 10:36 AM EST
AMMAN, Jordan - Moustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born filmmaker and producer of the "Halloween" horror movie franchise, died Friday from wounds sustained in the triple hotel bombings in Jordan. He was 75. His daughter, Rima Akkad Monla, 34, also was killed.
Akkad, who lived in Los Angeles, was in Jordan with his daughter to attend a wedding. He died in the Jordanian hospital where he was being treated.
The two were at the wedding celebration at the Radisson SAS Wednesday night when suicide bombers struck it, the Grand Hyatt and the Days Inn in downtown Amman, killing at least 59 people including the three attackers. Rima Akkad Monla, who lives in Beirut, Lebanon, was killed immediately.
Born in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in July 1930, the eldest of eight siblings, Akkad gained fame as a director and producer in the Arab world and West. After finishing his secondary studies in Syria, he left for America in 1950 to study film making, according to his sister.
He was best known for producing all eight "Halloween" films, starting with the 1979 "Halloween" directed by John Carpenter and starring then-unknown Jamie Lee Curtis. That movie - and the ones that followed - sparked the teen-slasher-horror genre that led to franchises including "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street."
Akkad also produced and directed "The Message" (1976), a film about Islam's prophet, Mohammed, and "Lion of the Desert" (1981), which tells the story of a Muslim rebel who fought against the Italy's World War II conquest of Libya. Both starred Anthony Quinn.
"The Message" was declared sacrilegious by a group of black American Muslims, who took hostages in three Washington, D.C. locations when the movie opened in the United States in March 1977, demanding it not be shown in America.
Akkad said he was baffled by the reaction to the movie, which he said cost $17 million to make. It also was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score.
"I did the film because it is a personal thing for me. ... Being a Muslim myself who lived in the West, I felt that it was my obligation, my duty to tell the truth about Islam.
"It (Islam) is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about, which surprised me. I thought I should tell the story that will bring this (history) to the West," he added.
Akkad said he turned to the horror genre because it was hard to raise money for religious-themed movies, according to a 1998 New York Times report.
A woman who answered the telephone at Akkad's Los Angeles home early Friday said she was too upset to talk. A telephone message left at the Los Angeles-area home of Akkad's ex-wife, Patricia, was not immediately returned. She left for Lebanon late Thursday.
The couple's daughter, Rima, grew up in Los Angeles an avid polo player who graduated from the University of Southern California in 1995 with a degree in international relations.
She pursued a master's degree in Middle East studies at the American University in Beirut, where she met her husband Ziad Monla, 35. Her husband's family owns the Monla Hospital in Tripoli, Lebanon. The couple, married for six years, has two sons, ages 2 and 4.
"Rima is a totally American girl," Patricia Akkad, 64, said Thursday in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "Here's an American who was over there and innocently killed for no reason."
She said her daughter loved living in Beirut.
"We all know the problems in the Middle East, and you never think it's going to touch you," she said.
Akkad's sister called for an end to terrorist attacks on civilians.
"I feel sad and the world feels sorrow with us. This kind of incident rarely happens, but it has happened with Moustapha Akkad," Leila Akkad told AP in a telephone interview. "These attacks are chaotic and do not differentiate an enemy from a friend. A solution must be found to this problem."
With the death of his daughter, Rima, Akkad is survived by three sons, Tarek, Malek and Zeido.
Funeral services for Rima Akkad Monla were scheduled for Friday in Tripoli. Services for Akkad were scheduled Sunday in his hometown of Aleppo, his sister.
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Associated Press writers Shafika Mattar in Amman, Jordan, and Ian Gregor in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
I loved the original six-episode "All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku-Nuku" series--I thought it was hilarious, with characters that were sweet and likable... even the bad guys! It's a great series for both adults and kids. "Dash!" is a sad, distorted shadow of that original series.
Jackson To Make Bahrain His Permanent Home
Superstar Michael Jackson has fallen in love with Bahrain after spending the summer in the Middle Eastern nation and now plans to make it his permanent home.
The King of Pop flew to Bahrain shortly after being acquitted of child molestation in a Santa Maria, California court and spent time there as a guest of the crown prince Sheik Salman Ibn Hamed Khalifa. And, after months of speculation suggesting Jackson is planning to sell his Neverland home in California, and make Bahrain his official headquarters, attorney Thomas Mesereau confirms his client is making a life-changing move.
He says, "He's moving on in life. He's living permanently in Bahrain. He has friends there who have been very loyal and helpful to him in a difficult period of his life."
Mesereau, who represented Jackson in his child molestation trial, insists the Middle East has been a tonic for the King of Pop. He adds, "He looks really well."
Skipping 'Oprah' May Have Saved Woman
October 05, 2005 8:12 PM EDT
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. - Angelique Fiorillo says the boulder that crashed through one wall of her second-story apartment and out another might have struck her if she'd been in her usual spot watching "Oprah."
Fiorillo said she was in a neighbor's apartment when the table-size rock thundered down Red Mountain Tuesday afternoon.
"We're like, 'Oh my God, what is that?'" she said.
Her husband was at work. Her two cats, Odin and Loki, took cover under a bedroom dresser and were unhurt.
Rain had apparently loosened the mountainside and unleashed a slide that sent the boulder bouncing down the mountainside, glancing off tree branches and then crashing through a corner of Fiorillo's apartment. It landed on the grass lawn outside, leaving a trail of debris indoors and out.
"Three Amigos!" is a fun romp, with plenty of physical comedy, fun dialogue, and characters that are funny because they are either too natty or simply stupid. The movie occasionally strays a little bit too far into utter silliness, but it is overall well-crafted with some great gags. The plot--shleps who are thrust into positions of great responsibility and danger due to a mistake, rise to become the heroes they were mistaken for--is a well-worn one, but it has rarely been done so well as in "Three Amigos!"
