| Celebs Must Broaden Their Vocabularies
The symbolic ban on the "n-word" has been passed, making it symbolically illegal to use the racial slur, though no penalties will follow if one should break this symbolic law. The City Council was unanimous in the move, which is aimed particularly at discouraging teens who may casually utter the term. But supporters of the symbolic moratorium are also requesting that celebrities eliminate the word from their vocabularies. The Recording Academy has been asked not to nominate musicians for Grammy awards if they use the word in their lyrics. But a Grammy spokesman said he doubted that the academy's voters would support censoring artists. Councilman Leroy Comrie has asked TV network Black Entertainment Television not to allow the use of the word in its shows. It has yet to be announced what word the station would condone instead.
I-Team: Redemption in Sin City
Sex has been a part of the Las Vegas allure since the beginning of the gambling era and today it's more obvious than ever. But for the women who become trapped within the sex industry, there's nothing glamorous about it. A veteran of the local escort industry says it's a miracle she survived her years as a prostitute and she's now trying to share the same sort of deliverance with others. Annie Lobert started her own outreach program for sex workers and is out on the streets trying to save them, one working girl at a time. "I was addicted to pornography. I was addicted to sex," Annie Lobert says as she marches through the sea of weirdness that is the Adult Entertainment Expo. She seems right at home. Lobert has never been a porn star like others at the Las Vegas gathering.
Very little entertainment
MUMBAI: For the media and entertainment industry, the only spark of good news is in the area of digitalisation of film exhibition and distribution. On all other fronts, the Budget seems to have more minuses than pluses for the industry. While tax deductions and exemptions have been given to the digital cinema segment, broadcasters will be impacted by the extension of Customs duty on equipment such as TV cameras, auto recording equipment, channel video mixer/switches, which were previously exempt from Customs duty. This is likely to increase the overall capital expenditure for broadcasters, especially for news channels. Said Times NOW CEO Sunil Lulla: "Despite having no domestic sources of broadcast equipment, CVD continues to be levied on import of broadcast equipment which will impact our costs." Also, set-top boxes have come into the tax net with the CVD and excise duties exemption being withdrawn, making it more expensive to manufacture STBs locally.
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