TRUE OR UNTRUE: The Aussie invasion, Lady Gaga, jailed blogger & more
I. EUROPEAN ARRIVAL. The arrival of the British settlers in 1788 at Australia is formally referred in Sydney as the "European arrival" instead of "European invasion".
NOT TRUE. Although most of the 22 million Australians are of British or Irish origin, the councilors at Sydney this week agreed to use the word "invasion" -- instead of "arrival" as proposed in the original plan, or "colonisation" as proposed in a compromise -- in its preamble to the council's new 2030 master plan. Council members voted 7-2 in favor of the change after members of the city's Aboriginal advisory group threatened to quit. European settlers had displaced the Aborigine population when they arrived in the late 18th century. Australia's original inhabitants are believed to have numbered around one million prior to the European settlement in the late 18th century, but are now just 470,000.The preamble now includes the sentence: "Despite the destructive impact of this invasion Aboriginal culture endured and is now globally recognised as one of the world's oldest cultures."
II. LADY GAGA. Pop superstar Lady Gaga has been sued for failing to remit proceeds of relief efforts for Japan following the great earthquake and Tsunami in March.
TRUE. A federal class action lawsuit alleges Lada Gaga overcharged the shipping costs on the $5 white and red "We Pray for Japan" wristbands she designed and sold on her website, keeping a portion of the sales despite her promise that all proceeds would go to directly to the relief efforts. According to 1-800-LAW-FIRM, the law firm leading the suit, the "Born This Way" singer and her team also "inflated reports of the total donations." Lady Gaga is reported to have donated about $3 million to Japan disaster relief through sales of the wristbands and other ventures. Lady Gaga, with earnings of $90 million in the past year, was last month named the most powerful celebrity in the world by Forbes magazine.
III. MICKEY MOUSE. An Islamic version of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse was welcomed in Egypt. An online cartoon of Mickey with a beard and Minnie in a face veil that was used to advertise for a mobile phone company was a hit.
NOT TRUE. Islamic hard-liners said the cartoon was a mockery of Islam and called Muslims in Egypt to boycott Egyptian Christian businessman Naguib Sawiris' mobile company Mobinil. Sawiris, also a politician, after receiving a barrage of hate messages in Facebook and Twitter, has since apologized, saying that he was only joking.
IV. BAD FOOD. A food critic was sentenced to 30 days in jail and ordered to pay a US$7,000 penalty for writing a negative review of a restaurant.
TRUE. In the United States, a restaurant could not probably successfully sue someone for a bad review, given that a review clearly represents an opinion and due to free speech issues. But in Taiwan, a court ruled in favor of a local restaurant that sued for libel against a blogger who said that the food was "too salty" and that there were cockroaches in the kitchen. The woman, Liu, the ordered dried noodles and side dishes at a beef noodle restaurant in Taichung in 2008, and later posted a review of the restaurant in her blog. The court, whose ruling is final, said Liu's characterization of the restaurant's food was unfair because she had only sampled one dish.
V. DIE TWICE. A woman who was already declared dead woke up at her own funeral and died "again".
TRUE. A 49-year-old woman in Russia died from a heart attack after waking up to discover that she had been declared dead and was taken for burial. Mourners that gathered around her coffin to pray were shocked when the supposedly dead lady woke up. After realising that she was going to be buried, the woman began screaming. She was immediately brought to a hospital and died after 12 minutes in intensive care from a suspected heart attack. The husband is planning to sue the hospital in Kazan, Russia.