Foto TERMAHAL Didunia

US$3.89mil (RM11.84 juta)

A self-portrait of Cindy Sherman has broken the record for the most expensive photograph at an auction in the US.

The photograph Untitled #96, taken in 1981, was sold for a whopping US$3.89mil (RM11.84mil) last week.

Its buyer was Philippe Segalot, a New York dealer.

Untitled #96 has broken the record of Andreas Gursky's 99 Cent II Diptychon, which fetched US$3.35mil (RM10.2mil) in 2006.

Sherman, 57, is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits.

She has been awarded the Guild Hall Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Arts, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Award and the Jewish Museum's Man Ray Award.

Last year, Sherman's Untitled #153, featuring her as a mudcaked corpse, was sold for US$2.7mil (RM8.22mil).

Source: Agencies
Published May 17 2011

Hamik Kau!

Fed-up father drags son naked through streets after teenager breaks computer ban

A furious father pulled his son out of a cyber cafe by his hair, stripped him naked and dragged him home by his feet after the game-addicted teenager disobeyed a computer ban.

Lu Tan, 39, said he had warned son Xiaomeng, 14, dozens of times not to play computer games, adding: 'I chucked the computer in the bin because he spent all his time in his room doing no work - but then when I came home from work I found he had gone to the internet cafe.'

He stormed into the cafe at Hechi city, in Guagnxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in southern China and dragged his son out in front of his friends.

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The Osama I Remember

By Kamal Hyder in Asia on Thu, 05/12/2011 - 08:37.
aljazeera.net/asia

Within years after Russian forces invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the US and Saudi Arabia sent in billions of dollars to help the mujahideen, or holy warriors, in their uphill struggle against Russian forces. As the battles for control of Afghanistan got under way, thousands of Arab and other foreign volunteers made a beeline for Pakistan to join the Afghan mujahideen and cross into Afghanistan to wage jihad against the brutal occupation of Afghanistan.

Among them was one man named Osama bin Laden, a Saudi billionaire who chose a simple life and felt comfortable in the barren but beautiful landscape of Afghanistan with its vast deserts that probably brought memories of home in Saudi Arabia. Even there according to his friends he would disappear into the desert and find time for contemplation. With so many fighters from such far-away lands, Osama blended in just like any ordinary fighter and most people who met him just called him Osama by his first name and not by his titles.

Humble and soft-spoken, he was able to blend into a culture of hospitality. An Afghan guide who had himself fought the war in Afghanistan and knew Osama well told me if Osama was to walk down the street, hardly anyone would even notice.