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South Korea Changed Law so BTS Could Delay Mandatory Military Service

K-Pop superstars BTS aren’t just a crew of incredible entertainers, they’re also a crew of young South Koreans whose ages range from 23 to 27. Which could have posed a problem very soon, since that means they’re all subject to the country’s mandatory military service, which according to South Korean law must begin by a person’s 28th birthday.

But luckily for fans of the “Dynamite” hitmakers, the South Korean National Assembly passed a new law on Tuesday allowing people to put off compulsory military service until age 30. And all you have to do to qualify is be an internationally recognized pop music powerhouse. No, seriously.

South Koreans are required to spend at least 21 months in the military — which can take aspiring artists out of their craft during crucial years of development. But people who achieve distinction in certain sport or artistic fields are allowed to skip military

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George Clooney says wife Amal ‘changed everything’ for him

Nov. 30 (UPI) — George Clooney says his wife, Amal Clooney, changed his life in a transformative way.

The 59-year-old actor discussed his “fulfilling” life with Amal, 42, and their 3-year-old twins, daughter Ella and son Alexander, in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning.

Clooney and Amal married in September 2014. In the context of his new film The Midnight Sky, Clooney said having someone to care for in real life has changed his life.

“There is no question that having Amal in my life changed everything for me. No question,” the star said. “It was the first time that everything that she did and everything about her was infinitely more important than anything about me.”

“Then we had these two knuckleheads, and it is very fulfilling,” he added. “It’s something I … didn’t see coming.”

Clooney said he and Amal didn’t discuss marriage while they were dating.

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How has art criticism changed in the digital age?


Black and white and read all over: the Underground in 1991, before screens replaced newspapers and magazines
Photo: Gideon Mendel/Corbis via Getty Images

Like many art world denizens, Niru Ratnam—a London gallerist and former critic, sardonic blogger and art fair director—used to discover new art in magazines. The first one he bought was a 1994 issue of Frieze, the art journal launched by Matthew Slotover, Amanda Sharp and Tom Gidley in 1991. When asked to respond to our questions on the changes in criticism and the art media since The Art Newspaper launched 30 years ago, Ratnam returned to that magazine. Inside, an article explored nascent art on a newfangled thing called the internet. There, Ratnam found these words: “Proportionately, there are very few people with an informed interest in contemporary art; fewer of these have computers, fewer still a modem and internet connection. In Britain you could meet

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Kirsty MacColl changed controversial lyric for TV appearance in 1992



a blurry image of a person

© Provided by The Independent


The Christmas song “The Fairytale of New York” has hit the headlines once again for its lyric containing the word “f****t”, after Radio 1 announced it would air a censored version this year.

For years it has been debated whether the song, which is sung by Kirsty MacColl in her duet with The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, is offensive given the word’s modern use as a homophobic slur.

Others argue that the context of the song means the word should be interpreted as traditional Irish slang for a “lazy person”.

A video re-emerged in 2019 of a live performance on Top of the Pops in January 1992, in which MacColl changed the original lyrics “You cheap lousy f****t” to “You’re cheap and you’re haggard”.

This line was also used by Ronan Keating for a very poorly received cover version in 2000.

The offending lyric was

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Kylie Minogue on How 2005 Breast Cancer Diagnosis Changed Her: ‘You See Everything Differently’

Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Kylie Minogue

Kylie Minogue is reflecting on how her harrowing cancer journey changed her life.

The Australian pop icon was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005.

“It’s like the earth had kind of slipped off its axis. You see everything differently,” Minogue, 52, recalls in this week’s issue of PEOPLE.

“I remember having had my diagnosis, but the world didn’t know. I was with my brother and my boyfriend at the time — we were all in a daze and went to a cafe. The server at the cafe was like, ‘Hey, how are you today?’ We just kind of robotically said, ‘Good, thanks,’ and in that moment I just thought: You really don’t know what anyone is going through. I thought that same person by tomorrow is going to see the news and say, ‘Oh my God, she was here yesterday, and we didn’t know.'”

RELATED: Kylie

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‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Showrunner Krista Vernoff on How Cast Exits Changed TV’s Biggest Medical Drama

Click here to read the full article.

When Krista Vernoff read the script of the “Grey’s Anatomy” pilot in 2004, she was coming off the “most difficult job” of her TV career, writing on “Wonderfalls.” In an interview for Variety’s cover story about “Grey’s Anatomy” for the magazine’s Power of Women issue, Vernoff said of the quirky Fox dramedy: “I just kept getting rewritten systematically. It was the only time in my career that happened, but it was humbling, and important for me to experience.”

But Vernoff knew she would be a perfect match for “Grey’s Anatomy.”

“I feel like I wrote this script in a fever dream,” she remembers telling her agent after she’d read Shonda Rhimes’ ABC pilot. “I get this voice. I need to meet this woman.”

Vernoff ended up becoming the show’s head writer for its first seven seasons. She returned for Season 14 as

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Joining the world’s first gay rugby team changed my life. So I made a film about it | Eammon Ashton-Atkinson | Film

When I read Dan Palmer’s brave and honest coming out column in the Sydney Morning Herald last week, suddenly I was jolted back to a dark place seven years ago when I almost took my own life. The former Wallabies prop described a moment when he was driving recklessly, the feeling of “death felt preferable to anybody discovering [he] was gay.”

For me, I was working as a television reporter in Townsville in 2013 and driving to an interview. Suddenly I felt this heavy urge to have an accident. With all my strength I pulled over and called my best friend who told me to go to the doctor. I did immediately. He prescribed me antidepressants which helped fight off the black dog that had been chasing me since high school. Finally, it had caught up.

Unlike Palmer, I was already out. In fact, I was outed when a

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World Music Album Grammy Name Changed Over ‘Connotations of Colonialism’

Mere weeks ahead of the unveiling of the nominees for the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy has announced a name change for the Best World Music Album category.

In a statement to Billboard, a rep for the Recording Academy explained that the decision was the result of a series of discussions over the summer involving “artists, ethnomusicologists, and linguists.” Ultimately, the updated name—Best Global Music Album—is intended to mark a move away from “connotations of colonialism” and toward a more inclusive overall approach to the yearly awards show.

“The change symbolizes a departure from the connotations of colonialism, folk, and ‘non-American’ that the former term embodied while adapting to current listening trends and cultural evolution among the diverse communities it may represent,” the Recording Academy rep said on Monday.

For the upcoming 2021 show, additional category-related changes were announced earlier this year. Among the additional previously announced

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China’s Stance on Homosexuality Has Changed. Its Textbooks Haven’t.

Early in college, Ou Jiayong had already learned two things. One, textbooks can be wrong. And two, it can be hard to change them — especially on topics as sensitive in China as homosexuality.

In 2016, during her first year at South China Agricultural University in her hometown, Guangzhou, she stumbled across a psychology textbook that described being gay as a mental disorder.

As a lesbian, Ms. Ou felt that was unacceptable, but the complaints she made went nowhere.

So Ms. Ou, who also uses the name Xixi, brought a lawsuit demanding that the publisher remove the reference and publicly apologize. Her case has renewed the conversation about tolerance and human rights in a country where discrimination based on sexual orientation is rampant and where homosexuality has long been seen as incompatible with the traditional emphasis on marriage.

In a letter to the judge, Ms. Ou, now 23, recalled being

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How Detroit Assembly Lines Changed Music Forever

Photo credit: Yale Joel - Getty Images
Photo credit: Yale Joel – Getty Images

From Road & Track

All music is a product of time and place. Often, this happens in subtle ways—composers and songwriters absorb the sounds, moods, and cultures of their environment, sometimes without even realizing it. Other times, the influence is a bit more explicit.

Berry Gordy Jr. began working at a Lincoln-Mercury plant in 1955. Gordy was an aspiring songwriter at the time, but with a young family to support, he did what so many musicians have to do, and took a day job. “Those slow-moving car frames were the loveliest sight I’d ever seen,” he wrote in his autobiography To Be Loved. “There was a pleasing simplicity to how everyone did the same thing over and over again.”

Photo credit: Donaldson Collection - Getty Images
Photo credit: Donaldson Collection – Getty Images

The work paid reasonably well—$86.40 a week—and by Gordy’s account, was fairly easy. “I learned it

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