Carlos Santana is on tour and has an album coming out, but in an interview with Rolling Stone posted online on Friday the rocker said he sees himself one day heading up a church in Hawaii. Santana also told the magazine about the pain of recently going through a divorce from his wife of 34 years, Deborah.
Brazilian race car driver Helio Castroneves and his sister and lawyer were indicted on Thursday on charges of conspiring to defraud the US of taxes on US$5.55 million of income, prosecutors said. The two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and his sister, Katiucia Castroneves, were also charged with six counts of income tax evasion for the years 1999 through 2004.
Singer Natalie Cole is resting in bed at her Los Angeles home after being hospitalized in New York last month because of a setback in her battle with Hepatitis C, her spokeswoman said on Thursday. The Grammy-award winning singer, 58, canceled her tour dates next month and all other appearances after spending about a week in the hospital last month.
Clint Eastwood spends more time behind the camera these days directing films. But anyone who believed him a few years ago when he said he had given up on acting, can think again. Eastwood has changed his mind. The Academy Award-winning director, who was promoting his latest film Changeling at the New York Film Festival on Thursday, began acting more than 50 years ago and gained fame playing tough-minded cowboys and cops.
More than 60 artists, including Radiohead, Robbie Williams and the Kaiser Chiefs announced Saturday they had banded together to seek more rights over their music and break free of record labels.
The Featured Artists’ Coalition (FAC) aims to “give artists the voice they need to argue for greater control over their music,” amid new opportunities provided by Internet, the group said in a statement.
“It is time for artists to have a strong collective voice to stand up for their interests,” said Brian Message, co-manager of Radiohead and Kate Nash.
“The digital landscape is changing fast and new deals are being struck all the time, but all too often without reference to the people who actually make the music.”
Message said the FAC would “help all artists, young and old, well-known or not, drive overdue change through the industry in their interests and those of fans.”
Thus far, 61 artists have signed up to the coalition, which was officially launched yesterday in the northwest English city of Manchester.
It is fighting for changes to laws that govern business in the music industry so that artists always ultimately own the rights to their music, rather than record labels.
The FAC is also calling for, among other things, artists to receive “fair compensation whenever their business partners receive an economic return from the exploitation of the artists’ work.”
Several groups have recently used the Internet to promote their music directly to fans, often bypassing record labels entirely, including Radiohead, which launched their latest album In Rainbows in October 2007 on the Web.
Last week, Oasis posted its new album Dig Out Your Soul on Internet social networking site MySpace in advance of its commercial release, allowing fans to listen to the whole compilation, but they could not buy it.
Janet Jackson has postponed three more shows because of an undisclosed illness.
Her publicist said in an e-mail late Saturday that Jackson was postponing a Saturday show in Greensboro, North Carolina, one yesterday in Atlanta and a third tomorrow in Fort Lauderdale.
A statement from Jackson said she arrived in Greensboro, North Carolina, hoping to perform there Saturday, but a local doctor advised that she not perform after it became “evident’’ she was not fully recovered.
Representatives for the 42-year-old singer say she became “suddenly ill’’ and was hospitalized Monday night in Montreal shortly after she arrived for a show. She also canceled concerts in Boston and Philadelphia on Wednesday and Thursday.
Jackson’s publicist did not elaborate Saturday, only saying she was “recuperating.’’ The note said Jackson will return home, at her doctor’s direction, for further treatment.
In the note Jackson said the promoter is working to reschedule dates.
Jackson is on her first North American tour in seven years.
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy
The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade