Names and faces
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler is disputing rumors about his health after an early end to the band’s tour, saying he “certainly did not have a heart attack or seizure.” The 69-year-old Tyler says in a statement posted on the band’s website that he’s sorry for cutting the tour short but he had to have a medical procedure that only his doctor in the United States could perform. Aerosmith announced last week that it was canceling the tour’s final four shows in Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Mexico. Tyler said in that announcement that his condition wasn’t life threatening but it was something he needed to deal with immediately.
Dan Brown is again taking on the big questions. “Will God survive science?” asked the author of the blockbuster The Da Vinci Code and other philosophical-religious thrillers during an interview. “All the gods of our past have fallen. So the question now is: Are we naive to think the gods of today won’t suffer the same fate?” Brown’s new novel, Origin, is a familiar blend of travelogue, history, conspiracies and whodunit, with asides on everything from the poetry of William Blake to the rise and fall of fascism in Spain. In the novel, Brown protagonist Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist, attempts to find out why a former student was assassinated just as he was ready to unveil a scientific-technological breakthrough that he promised will bring about the downfall of Western religion and revolutionize how people think of life and death. Brown said faith became difficult for him when, as a boy, he was confused by how the theory of evolution contradicted the story of Adam and Eve. When he asked a priest about the differences, “This guy said, ‘Nice boys don’t ask that question,’” he said. “I did what every little boy does, I started asking the questions.”
British actors Steve Coogan and
Sienna Miller have received financial damages and apologies from Mirror
Group Newspapers in the settlement of long-running phone-hacking cases. The amounts of the damages awards were not made public, but Coogan said outside London’s High Court on Tuesday that it was a “six-figure” sum, the bulk of which would be distributed to charity.
He said the settlement meant “vindication” for him. Miller was not in court. Her lawyer said she had been extensively targeted by journalists for the Mirror group. Coogan’s lawyer said the newspaper group had produced at least 62 articles based on illegal phone hacking, illegally obtaining information about Coogan from third parties, and surveillance by private investigators. Lawyer Richard Munden said the Mirror Group apologizes for its “wrongdoing” and “acknowledges that Mr. Coogan was the target of unlawful activities and that these activities were concealed until years later.”