Whoa! There is some serious schadenfreude happening in the US. First there was the adoration that fetus fetishists heaped upon octo-mom, only to back pedal furiously and run shrieeeking from the media phenom as grittier details of her life emerged. Now it appears that the long-suffering residents of Wernersville Pennsylvania have ratted out Jon and Kate to the paparazzi. Rather than bringing economic prosperity to the town and generating good will, it appears that the couple's egoistic arrogance and ostentatious preening has provoked quite the nasty backlash.
From the BBC, this news item investigates a notorious tabloid's claim that the father of a girl who was a member of the amazingly talented crew of actors from Slumdog Millionaire agreed to sell his daughter to people who posed as a wealthy couple from Dubai.Rafiq Qureshi said he had not accepted a deal to sell nine-year-old Rubina Ali into adoption.
The News of the World said Mr Qureshi had demanded £200,000 from its reporters, who were posing as a wealthy family from Dubai looking to adopt.
Mr Qureshi told the BBC the media had "made fun of our poverty". "They tricked us into this fakery but we came out unscathed," said Rubina's father, who is a carpenter in Mumbai.
Thanks to the evident fascination/obsession that Van Susteren and Coale have with Sarah Palin and her nuclear family, expect more in the way of brain freeze over the next few years.There is something absolutely bizarre and troubling going on in the political netherworld of Sarah and Todd Palin, Greta Van Susteren and her wannabe-queen-maker hubby, John Coale. At best, it's a clear case of journalistic conflict-of-interest on behalf of Van Susteren; at worst, it's a sleazy, national power play by a couple of practitioners of Scientology - the controversial cult that Time magazine described as "a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner." ...
While there's something ironic about Alaska's most famous evangelical Christians pallin' around with a couple who believes that 75 million years ago an entity named Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft ... It was Van Susteren who made Bristol Palin a public figure, who pulled her out of her privacy with her child, and who played the ratings game with Bristol's private life. Not once did Van Susteren acknowledge that fact, reflect on it, nor express any regret for doing so. Not once. So much for insight and compassion.
Six love letters written by Prince Charles to a woman living in Canada, revealing a long-term romance between the pair, are attracting potential buyers after being put on sale for $30,000 on eBay this week.
The letters, addressed only to a Janet, are thought to have been sent by the Prince in 1976 and 1980 to Janet Jenkins, a British-born woman living in Montreal at the time. ...
The letters are suggestive of a long-running affair. In one dated June 8, 1980, Charles laments that on a recent visit to Canada that his staff wouldn't have approved of Ms. Jenkins visiting his hotel room.
"I can see that I shall just have to get married as soon as possible and then all these people might relax a little ...!" the letter, written on Windsor Castle letterhead, reads. "Don't worry, whatever happens I will make sure you are given early warning ..."
