A museum dedicated to legendary Swedish pop group ABBA has hit snags, and will not open as planned in June next year, the founder said Saturday.
“There will be for sure a museum but we don’t know when and we do not even know where,” Ulf Westman said.
Westman, who dreamed up the museum along with his wife, Ewa Wigenheim-Westman, said the problem lay with the building that had been earmarked for the project.
“The problem is it’s a very old building, the house is 100 years old and the renovation of the building is taking (on) very large proportions,” he said.
Westman had announced last December that “ABBA the Museum” would open in Stockholm from June 3, featuring the quartet’s costumes, instruments and rare memorabilia along with interactive and multimedia displays. Over 3,000 tickets to the museum have already been sold.
ABBA stars Bjoern Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Faeltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad became international sensations with hits such as Money, Money, Money, Waterloo, Fernando and Dancing Queen.
Despite having broken up a quarter of a century ago, ABBA still sells between two and three million albums a year. To date they have sold 360 million records, with only Elvis and the Beatles selling more.
The Mamma Mia! musical, featuring many of their hits, has been seen by 27 million people around the world since its premiere in London in 1999 and has now been made into a film.
In August their Gold — Greatest Hits album was back in the number one spot in Britain, despite being released in 1992.
Disco megastars The Village People were honored Friday for their hits of the late 1970s and early 1980s with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The current group members appeared for the ceremony unveiling the star dressed in their iconic outfits — as a policeman, a cowboy, a soldier, an Indian chief, a construction worker and a biker.
An icon of gay culture, the group had hits including YMCA, Macho Man, In the Navy and Go West.
US rapper Snoop Dogg was Friday granted a visa to tour Australia after immigration authorities took into account his recent conduct and a reference from Oscar winning actor Russell Crowe.
A visa for the performer, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr, had been under review by the Immigration Department because of his criminal record.
But the government gave the green light for Snoop Dogg’s planned tour with fellow hip-hop star Ice Cube after weighing his criminal convictions against his previous behavior in Australia and charity work.
“We took into account all relevant factors and, on balance, the department decided to grant the visa,” a spokesman said.
There was no evidence of any violence occurring either at any of Snoop Dogg’s performances or as a consequence of his presence in other countries, it said.
Matt Damon kept his cool as he helped distribute food from a truck that got stuck in the mud in a western Haitian town where Hurricane Ike left hundreds of people homeless and hungry.
He arrived with Haitian-born singer Wyclef Jean to hand out rice, beans and cooking oil in Cabaret, a town that saw 60 people die in flash floods when Ike grazed Haiti last week.
Things got rough when the truck carrying 300 bags of food ran into a ditch, forcing the rest of the caravan to stop. Hundreds of Haitians mobbed an SUV carrying the celebrities, chanting “Wyclef!” “I want to see Wyclef because he is my artist,’’ said Jean Sadrac, an unemployed 25-year-old. “I want Wyclef to help me with money or water.’’ Jean clambered onto the roof of the SUV to calm the crowd, while bodyguards helped Damon make his way toward the truck with the food.
He reached it easily; nobody recognized him.
Damon said he enjoyed being in a place where few people have seen his movies.
”It’s nice, it’s really easy to move through a crowd like this,’’ Damon said, grinning wryly as he watched Jean talk to the crowd.
About 20 people from Jean’s Yele Haiti charity formed a barrier around the back of the food truck, which leaned perilously to one side. The distribution took place right there. Damon tossed the bags to Jean, who placed them on the heads of women as they approached one by one.
“What I’m doing, I’m doing from the heart because I love Haiti,’” Jean said.
Jean, who moved from Haiti to Brooklyn as a child and leapt to fame with The Fugees, has often brought his famous friends to draw attention to the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt visited with his charity in 2006.
Back in celebrity land, cameras flashed and films rolled as a crowd of paparazzi tried to get the perfect shot of Britney Spears’ little sister as she left the Los Angeles International Airport.
Just one snag: The woman wasn’t Jamie Lynn Spears.
In what appears to be a case of the old switcharoo, airport police on Wednesday duped paparazzi at the crowded terminal by leading an unidentified woman — wearing sunglasses and looking away from cameras — down an escalator and through a hallway while the real Jamie Lynn and her baby girl safely left the airport from another area.
Police denied any trickery and said they were not escorting the woman.
Sergeant Holcomb of the Los Angeles airport police said it’s against department policy to provide security for celebrities, but officers were willing to do it after the Spears family asked for an escort for Jamie Lynn and baby.
“If there’s extenuating circumstances, we can do what we need to do,’’ Holcomb said. “If there was no baby -- hey, you’re on your own. You’re an adult.’’ He said police were concerned with the possibility of shoving in the crowd of 100 photographers and about 50 Delta Air Lines employees waiting for the group.
“I think someone got the best of the paparazzi this time,’’ Holcomb said.
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