Celebrity Buzz & Spotlight: Cannes

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Jun 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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Jun 3, 2011

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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Jun 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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