People

People

SINGING FOR G8
Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi has asked a leading Japanese producer to compose a pop song for the Group of Eight summit to be held in Japan in July. ``I want a song that can be loved by everyone,'' the premier told producer, composer and keyboard musician Tetsuya Komuro, who has his own group called Globe. ``I am proud,'' Komuro told reporters, according to the Asahi Shimbun and other dailies. ``I would like to visit Okinawa as soon as possible. I want to learn how to apply traditional Okinawan music.'' The G8 brings together the Group of Seven nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States -- with Russia. G8 leaders will meet in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.

BAN OR NOT
Thailand's film censorship committee is under fire from local historians over its decision to ban Jodie Foster's new movie Anna and the King. The censorship committee has branded the 20th Century Fox production an insult to the monarchy and a distortion of Thai history, but several local historians said the ban underestimated the public's ability to distinguish fact from fiction.
``The FCC is strange and retrogressive, the ruling shows ideals of a nation, religion and monarchy in an undemocratic way,'' said Thammasat University historian Charnvit Kasetsiri, according to The Nation daily. Historian Thanet Apronsuvan said rather than banning the film, authorities should have educated the public about the truth behind the film. ``Film censorship deprives the citizen of his right to be informed,'' said Thanet at a public discussion about the controversial film. However, Silpakorn University's Chalermsri Chantasingh said the ban was appropriate because the film was based on an American fantasy which wrongly portrayed Thai history.

DEPARDIEU VS AMERICA
French actor Gerard Depardieu, a staunch opponent of Hollywood's domination of the movie business, will star in The Last Tango in Moscow, a film being made by Russian director Vladimir Menshov. Menshov has himself been feted by the Hollywood film fraternity. He directed the quirky Soviet film Moscow Distrusts Tears which won the Oscar for the Best Foreign Film in 1979. Last week, in the Polish capital Warsaw, Depardieu lashed out at what he called American cultural domination even though he is making a new film with Disney. ``Sometimes they get on my nerves, their way of controlling everything,'' he said in Warsaw. ``Cinema nowadays has become an industry ruled by money and of course the Americans,'' he told a press conference. But he said he was not against America as such and was going to do another film with Disney, a cartoon based on the 101 Dalmatians classic. Depardieu has won several awards for his film roles including the 1991 Golden Globe for best actor in GreenCard. In Warsaw, he said he had personally refused an offer of a US green card to allow him to live and work in the States. ``I prefer to remain a citizen of the world,'' the globe-trotting film star said.

DEATH OF A SERB WARLORD
Amid conflicting reports, a pro-government paper alleged that three conspirators in the murder of Serb warlord Arkan were members of his feared Tigers paramilitary unit. ``The newspaper has learned that three of the five assailants were former members of the Serbian Volunteer Guard and an investigation will doubtless reveal why Arkan's guardsmen killed their commander,'' said Novi Sad Dnevnik, which is close to President Slobodan Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party. The Serbian Volunteer Guard, which became notorious in the Bosnia and Croatian wars, were known as the Tigers. ``Investigations will also reveal who was behind the killing,'' said the newspaper, based in Novi Sad. Zeljko Raznatovic, 47, also called Arkan, was shot several times in the foyer of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel last Saturday. Although Opposition parties and allied media had claimed Milosevic's regime was behind the killing and described the act as ``State terrorism,'' recent reports have heeded a warningby the government mouthpiece daily Politika. The paper advised against making ``hasty'' interpretations motivated by ``bad intentions''. Arkan was slain along with two associates.

GRANDMOMS CALLING
The grandmothers of Elian Gonzalez made an emotional appeal for the six-year-old boy's repatriation, saying his late mother would not ``rest in peace'' until he was sent back to Cuba. ``For his mother to be able to rest in peace, he must return to the side of his father and his grandparents,'' his maternal grandmother, Raquel Rodriguez, said in a voice trembling with emotion. Her daughter, the boy's mother, died along with his stepfather when the boat on which they sought to reach US shores capsized in November. Elian was rescued clinging to an inner tube in waters off the Florida coast. The boy has been the subject of a fierce international tug-of-war pitting his father and the Cuban state against Elian's Miami relatives and members of Florida's Cuban-American exile community who despise Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Flanked by leaders of the US National Council of Churches, who are trying to mediate the dispute, Rodriguez and Elian's paternal grandmother, Mariela Quintana, argued that theFlorida family has no right to keep him. Representatives of the Miami-based relatives, with whom he has been staying since his November 25 rescue, said the boy's handover to the grandmothers was not to be expected any time soon.