10 screen actors to count on

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-090825-best-actors-pictures,0,3181716.photogallery
Call them the New Reliables — the screen performers we’ve come to count on through thick and thin, in good films and bad, in leading roles as well as supporting turns. They’ve spent enough hours in front of a camera to keep their heads above water when the scripts threaten to drown them in mediocrity, [...]

The Reading festival flag ban drives me up the pole

(The Guardian)
By Paul Moody
Flags have been banned from this year’s Reading and Leeds festivals, but they’re integral to the atmosphere

Flagging it up … the crowd at Glastonbury 2009.
So, a last-minute ban on flags and large banners has been imposed at the Reading Leeds festivals this weekend. The reason, organisers claim, is that they “restrict the [...]

French Rap as a Flash Point

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/arts/27iht-rap.html?ref=arts
By SCOTT SAYARE
PARIS — A gentlemanly patron of the arts, Frédéric Mitterrand, France’s culture minister, seems an unlikely champion of rap. But when the French artist Orelsan called publicly for his support at the height of a months-long free-speech polemic around the rapper’s song “Sale Pute” (Dirty Whore), Mr. Mitterrand obliged.
“Orelsan expresses a lover’s spite, [...]

British Design: Not What It Used to Be

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/fashion/24iht-design24.html?ref=global
By ALICE RAWSTHORN
LONDON — Strikes. Disappearing letters. Shuttered post offices. Irritatingly long queues and suspicious smells in the survivors. There are (sadly) lots of reasons for the British to indulge in the popular national pastime of grumbling about the Royal Mail this summer.
The appearance last week of a new series of Royal Mail stamps to [...]

The Reincarnation of the Jelly Shoe, With a Designer Flair

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/fashion/18iht-fshoes.html?ref=global
By JESSICA MICHAULT
PARIS — This summer a number of top designers have made it possible for customers to revisit a summer staple that many thought would forever remain a childhood memory: the plastic sandal.
Brands like Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, See by Chloé and Tory Burch have all added plastic footwear to their collections.
Behind this new [...]

Keeping Radio’s Salsa Hot for 50 Years

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/arts/music/27vega.html?_r=1&ref=arts
By LARRY ROHTER
Spanish speakers in New York know him as El Rey de la Radio — the King of Radio. For longer than most of them can remember, Polito Vega’s booming, ebullient baritone, amusing stories and colorful catchphrases —“andando, andando, andando” — have been a constant and reassuring presence, as much a part of the [...]

Xinjiang News Still Hard to Come By

In the aftermath of the July 5 riots in Urumqi, clear and reliable information on Xinjiang has been hard to come by.

Apple, Facing Competition, Readies iPhone for Launch in Giant China Market

Apple Inc. is getting closer to clearing the hurdles to start selling iPhones in China, one of the last major phone markets Apple has yet to tap.

China Announces a System for Voluntary Organ Donors

China has inaugurated a voluntary organ donor program, hoping to overhaul a system that now harvests a vast majority of its organs from black-market sellers and executed prisoners and leaves millions of ailing people without hope of getting transplants.

Japan Democrat win could warm China ties

The expected victory for the opposition Democrats in Japan’s election this weekend could open the way for a tentative improvement in ties with China.