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LAMPEDUSA, Italy (Reuters) - Hollywood star Richard Gere on Saturday urged the Italian government to stop "demonising people" and instead help migrants who have been stranded on a Spanish charity boat in the Mediterranean for more than a week. Gere, who visited the Open Arms ship in a show of support on Friday, joined a news conference on the Italian island of Lampedusa to call for the 160 migrants stuck on the boat to be allowed to disembark. He compared the political situation in Italy, where League leader and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has repeatedly refused requests by migrant ships...

Hollywood A-lister Richard Gere, who portrayed King David in the eponymously titled 1985 film and is perhaps best remembered for his lead roles in An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, is set to land in Israel later on Tuesday. But while the actor’s past visits to the Jewish state received warm welcomes, Gere, whose expertise and qualifications justifying his telling Israel what to do consist of his being a movie actor, may be greeted by a far chillier reception, following political comments made on the eve of his trip. Gere’s visit, planned ostensibly for the premiere...

The brilliant Statesman and Hollywood actor, Richard Gere, while appearing as an expert witness before Congress, states his opinion of the "Ones" performance.Caution, Gerbil Alert!

Hollywood star and Tibet activist Richard Gere is slamming China for its recent bloody Himalayan protest, and is urging the world to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The outspoken Pretty Woman star was horrified at the treatment of demonstrators protesting against Chinese rule in Tibet on Friday, where at least 10 people were reported to have been killed. Gere, chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet and a devout Buddhist, insists there "absolutely" should be a worldwide boycott of the sporting event in August to force China to allow the Himalayan region to decide its own future. The 58-year-old star...

Actor Gere calls for Olympics boycott if China mishandles Tibet 1 hour, 50 minutes ago Hollywood actor and Tibet activist Richard Gere Saturday called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games if China "does not act in the proper way" in handling protests in the Himalayan region. Gere, an outspoken supporter of the Tibetan cause and a follower of the Dalai Lama, said there "absolutely" should be a worldwide boycott of the Games if Beijing mishandled protests that official Chinese media say have left seven dead. "In this situation if the Chinese do not act in the proper way,...

VENICE, Italy (AP) - Richard Gere and Charlize Theron added their voices to a chorus of stars taking swipes at the Bush administration at the Venice Film Festival. "How did we elect Bush twice?" Gere asked rhetorically while promoting his new film, "The Hunting Party." In the film, Gere plays a reporter determined to track down Radovan Karadizic—who has been hiding for more than a decade and is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity for his role as an alleged architect of the Bosnian war. "What's interesting to me is how do the bad people among us end up...

INDIA'S Supreme Court today suspended all legal proceedings against Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, who is facing obscenity charges for not resisting a public kiss by Hollywood star Richard Gere. Shetty, winner of the British reality television show Celebrity Big Brother, made headlines last month when Gere twirled her in his arms, arched her over and kissed her several times on the cheek at an anti-AIDS show in New Delhi. A lawyer filed a complaint in a lower court, describing the kiss as an obscene act under Indian laws.Reprieve ... an Indian Court has for the time being suspended all legal...

JAIPUR: Barely 48 hours after he was transferred to Kishangarh in Ajmer district for issuing an arrest warrant against Richard Gere and summons to Shilpa Shetty, additional chief judicial magistrate Dinesh Kumar Gupta remains unrepentant. In a rare chat with a TOI reporter, Gupta, who travelled to Ajmer to take up his new assignment on Friday, said all he had done was go by the book and was convinced that the Gere-Shilpa ‘kiss’ was an indecent act. He said the Indian Penal Code did not clearly define obscenity and when he heard about Gere’s dance-kiss-spoof case, he consulted various books...

Actor Richard Gere has apologised for causing offence when he kissed Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. The incident, at an AIDS awareness event in Delhi, prompted public protests and then an arrest warrant for both stars over the "obscene act". Gere, 57, said he had misread Indian customs and that he regretted any problems he had caused Shetty. He asked for the "media circus" to end and hoped it would not detract from the message of preventing AIDS. Gere kissed Shetty, 31, several times on the cheek while sweeping her backwards in a tango-style move. The court in Jaipur in Rajasthan...

Richard Gere isn't bothered that a warrant's out for his arrest in India, and he's accusing a "very small right-wing, very conservative" faction in the country for coming after him for his public kissing of an Indian actress. "They do this kind of thing quite often," Gere told Jon Stewart on last night's "Daily Show." "I don't know that anyone has actually gone to jail ... It goes to a reputable court and they throw it out." Yesterday, an Indian judge issued a warrant for Gere's arrest in Jaipur, saying that he had "transgressed all limits of vulgarity" when he...

JAIPUR/NEW DELHI: A Jaipur additional chief judicial magistrate on Thursday ordered the arrest of Hollywood actor Richard Gere for landing a peck on the cheeks of Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, triggering an outrage among the country's top legal experts who called it a "cheap publicity stunt" that bordered on "judicial indecency". The magistrate, Dinesh Gupta, reacting to a private complaint filed by advocate Poonam Chand Bhandari, watched a CD of an AIDS awareness function in Delhi at which Gere hugged and gave Shilpa a peck, as shown by a TV channel, to pronounce that the act was "sexually erotic" and...

NEW DELHI (AP) - A court issued arrest warrants for Hollywood actor Richard Gere and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on Thursday, saying their kiss at a public function "transgressed all limits of vulgarity," media reports said.

NEW DELHI — A court issued arrest warrants for Hollywood actor Richard Gere and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty on Thursday, saying their kiss at a public function "transgressed all limits of vulgarity," media reports said. Judge Dinesh Gupta issued the warrants in the northwestern city of Jaipur after a local citizen filed a complaint charging that the public display of affection offended local sensibilities, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Gupta earlier viewed television footage of the event, which he called "highly sexually erotic," saying the pair violated India's strict public obscenity laws. Gere and Shetty "transgressed all...

Up against Richard Gere and Nicole Kidman, the historical record doesn’t stand a chance. Gere is in Bosnia and Kidman just visited Kosovo. Beating a dead horse, the former is entering the familiar genre of anti-Serb films (Behind Enemy Lines, The Peacemaker) — and UN Goodwill Ambassador (and, coincidentally, Peacemaker star) Kidman is listening to more unverifiable yarns from Kosovo’s Serb-loathing Albanian Muslims (without, of course, visiting those who are actually under siege in the province — the handful of remaining Serbs who can’t step outside their miniscule NATO-guarded perimeters without getting killed by Albanians). How can we fight the...

(While filming "Bosnian Holiday",a film about the hunt for Karadzic), actor Richard Gere becomes ill from the smell of cevapi Sarajevo - Actor Richard Gere, who is a Buddhist and a vegeterian, became ill from the smell of cevapi [trans. note: small grilled sausages, a traditional dish] in the Sarajevo quarter of Bascarsija. The hospitable restaurant operators were forced to close their shops during filmining in Bascarsija because of Gere, even though they made an effort and brought him the very best cevapi to be had, writes the Sarajevo press. The famous Hollywood star is in Sarajevo filming "Holiday in...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP)- Richard Gere donned a pair of glittering gold dancing pumps to earn his pudding pot and crown Friday as Harvard's Hasty Pudding man of the year. In a nod to his role as a flashy lawyer in "Chicago" _ and to the resignation this week of Harvard President Lawrence Summers _ Gere sang a parody to the tune of "Razzle Dazzle": "I could become a permanent resident, I could become your next president." He also had to win the heart of a student costumed as a dragon, and put a blond wig and a white bra decorated...

Hollywood actor Richard Gere joined some 30 Nobel Laureates for a gathering of the world's top thinkers in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra. The conference, bringing together luminaries such as former peace prize winner the Dalai Lama, has set itself the none too modest task of finding solutions to the world's problems. "A process begins here -- a process that all of you will shape -- and by your effort, help shape our world," host King Abdullah II of Jordan said in his opening speech. Highlighting the conflict in the Middle East, he said the world needed to make...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Expecting no more than light chit-chat about ballroom dancing, reporters in Tokyo were startled when actor Richard Gere launched into a condemnation of Europe's plans to lift an arms embargo against China. After promoting his new film "Shall We Dance?," in which he co-stars with Jennifer Lopez, Gere grabbed a microphone to denounce plans by the European Union to lift the embargo imposed after China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989. "I so agree with your prime minister that the European Union should not remove the ban against selling arms to China," he said. "I agree...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - He's been a prostitute's rich beau, an officer, a gentleman and a gigolo, but Palestinians can't fathom Richard Gere's latest incarnation as a cheerleader for their elections this weekend. Well known for his vocal support of Tibet's Dalai Lama and celebrated for his captivating good looks, Gere urged Palestinians in a television commercial broadcast ahead of Sunday's poll in the West Bank and Gaza to get out to vote for a new president to succeed Yasser Arafat, who died in November. "Hi, I'm Richard Gere and I'm speaking for the entire world. We're with you...

Little Green Footballs alerts us that Hollywood actor (and incarnate Tibetan Buddhist lama, according to him) Richard Gere is urging Palestinians to vote ("Vote or Die"?) in the fortcoming election. The problem is that he is willing to share the stage with some murderous villains: Gere’s co-stars in this public service announcement, presumably also speaking for the entire world, have previously urged Palestinians to wipe out Israel and finish the work of Adolf Hitler: Joining Gere in the announcement are Sheik Taissir Tamimi, the head of the Islamic court in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Atallah Hanna, the...