Rihanna’s attorney says the singer would testify against Chris Brown if called as a witness in her boyfriend’s assault case.
Donald Etra, who is representing the 21-year-old Barbados native, said Friday that Rihanna would be required by law to testify if prosecutors subpoena her.
Etra appeared in court on Thursday when Brown made his first appearance on charges of assaulting and making criminal threats to his superstar girlfriend. Brown’s arraignment was postponed until April 6.
Etra said Rihanna did not want a “no contact” order issued against Brown, but that she will report any violations of an order prohibiting the 19-year-old singer from threatening, harassing or harming his girlfriend. A court order grants her the authority to record any violations of the order.
The order is not uncommon in cases where a victim says he or she doesn’t want to completely cut off communication with a person, said Steve Cron, a Santa Monica criminal defense attorney who has represented celebrities such as Paula Poundstone and Scott Weiland.
“There are limits to when you can record phone calls and conversations,” Cron said. “She can record those conversations if it’s for the purpose of showing there’s a violation of the restraining order.” Etra said Rihanna, whose real name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty, wants the case over with quickly. “She wants to get along with her life and career,” he said.
Brown was arrested Feb. 8 stemming from an altercation that police say he had with Rihanna in a car in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood.
A search warrant affidavit filed by a Los Angeles police detective described a brutal fight in which Brown allegedly punched, bit and choked Rihanna until she nearly lost consciousness.
He issued a statement a week after the incident, saying he was “sorry and saddened” by what had happened. He politely answered a court commissioner’s questions during his brief appearance Thursday, but did not speak to reporters afterward.
US rapper Coolio was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday for drug possession, officials said.
The 45-year-old Grammy-Award winner, best known for his 1995 hit Gangsta’s Paradise, was taken into custody at around 10:30am and later transferred to a Los Angeles Police Department station for booking.
Police would not comment on what drug the rapper, whose real name is Artis Leon Ivey Jr, was allegedly found with, stating only it was an “illegal substance.”
The TMZ.com Web site reported that the drug was crack cocaine.
Fresh from a two-month Caribbean vacation, singer Amy Winehouse is due in court for an alleged attack on a fellow guest at a party last year.
The retro-soul singer was charged with assault Thursday for allegedly attacking a fan at an end-of-summer ball in London on Sept. 26, police and the singer’s representative said.
Dancer Sherene Flash had been quoted by tabloid newspapers as saying she was hit in the eye by the 25-year-old Back to Black singer after asking to take her picture at the Berkeley Ball, a charity function held in central London’s Berkeley Square.
Spokesman Chris Goodman said Friday that Winehouse went voluntarily to the police station, where she was arrested and charged. She was released and is due to appear in court on March 17, police said.
Winehouse’s battles with addiction and frequent run-ins with the law have been highly publicized. She was fined for illegally possessing marijuana in Norway in 2007, and her drug problems have been front page news in Britain, where she was pictured puffing on what appeared to be a crack pipe
last year.
She also got a police warning in April of last year after scuffling with two men during a night out on the town in Camden, a young and raucous north London neighborhood known for its music scene — and drug culture.
Winehouse, who has been in and out of rehab, has recently returned from an extended
break in the Caribbean island of St Lucia.
Jade Goody, the cancer-stricken British reality television star, was christened along with her two children on Saturday in what her publicist called a “final good-bye.”
The 27-year-old, who found fame on Big Brother in 2002, was “very pale and fragile” during the ceremony at the Royal Marsden Hospital in west London, publicist Max Clifford said.
Sitting in a chair, Goody wore her hospital gown and had her drip still attached during the christenings.
Clifford said it was the last thing that Goody would do in the public eye.
The star, whose cervical cancer has spread to other parts of her body, has likely only weeks to live.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist