Asia Weekly

Asian Celebrities

Celebrity gossip

Family affair - Japanese model Yuri Ebihara insisted the rumours that she is having an affair with basketball player Kei Igarashi aren't true, says Japan Today, and instead she passed the buck to her married sister. "That was my twin sister," Ebihara said of the person seen at a basketball game in which Igarashi was playing, "not me." The 28-year-old Ebihara added that she is single but looking for love. "Honestly, I don't even have a boyfriend," she said, but "I do want to marry the next guy I go with, though."

Chinese medicine? - There is "feverish speculation" about the role Chinese doctors may have played in treating North Korean leader Kim Jong-il after his apparent stroke last month, says the Chosun Ilbo (South Korea). An unnamed South Korean intelligence source told the paper that it "doesn't seem that the doctors performed surgery" on the Dear Leader, but claimed that the doctors involved were neurosurgeons.

Look out, America - South Korean sensation BoA has conquered much of Asia with her feisty pop music; now she's set her sights on the US, reports Reuters. The 21-year-old already talks about herself in the third person, so she has the attitude right: "I successfully made it in Asia, so I hope to show more of BoA's songs and performances to more people," she said. Unlike her fellow star Rain, who didn't go down a storm in the States when he tried to break into the market, BoA can sing in English as well as being fluent in Korean and Japanese.

Cleared of catfight - Malaysian actress Nur Fazura Sharifudin's next role won't be as a jailbird after she was acquitted of causing hurt to another woman at a bar four years ago, reports The New Straits Times. The 24-year-old actress, who is a household name in Malaysia thanks to her leading role in TV series Gol and Gincu, was accused of attacking the woman during a fight over Ahmad Razman Ahmad Razali, the son of a former chief minister. She could have been jailed for up to a year if convicted.