Courtney Love spent her 40th birthday on Friday in typically public fashion.
She became a fugitive from justice after missing a court date in Los Angeles, and the police arrived at her Manhattan apartment early in the afternoon following a report that bottles had been thrown. But after a group of paparazzi serenaded Love with a lively rendition of Happy Birthday from under her open third-floor window, her mood seemed to turn somber, according to people who saw her from the street.
Love, who had been bantering with people on the street, blocked her windows. Some time later an ambulance arrived, the witnesses said. She sat on a stretcher while emergency workers put her in the ambulance and a gaggle of photographers, well-wishers and journalists followed.
"After the Happy Birthday, that's when she put the blinds up," said Samuel Jackson, a fashion designer, who was there. "Maybe the Happy Birthday upset her."
Love, a punk rock icon, is known nearly as well for her public displays of bad behavior as for her music. (Her band, Hole, broke up but she recently released an album, America's Sweetheart.) Earlier this year, she lifted her shirt at a taping of Late Show With David Letterman. She has been arrested in the past on charges that she had punched fans and cursed at flight attendants.
It was not clear why she need-ed an ambulance. A Fire Department spokesman said a 911 call had reported a miscarriage. A police officer who responded to reports that Love had thrown bottles said the singer told her she had had an abortion on Thursday.
The police said she was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, but a spokesman for the hospital said he could not confirm or deny that she was there.
"She looked very, very pale," Jackson said.
Love's lawyer, Michael Rosenstein, said that she had been receiving medical treatment for a gynecological condition and that she had medical problems when he spoke with her on Thursday night.
The day's problems seemed to have begun in California, when Love did not make a mandatory court appearance in Los Angeles Superior Court regarding April 24 assault charges that she denied. Rosenstein said she had confused the date with another that did not require her presence.
"The judge wasn't particularly interested in the story," he said by telephone. "He issued a bench warrant."
Then there were the reports of the thrown bottles in New York. One police officer who responded said that it was hard to recognize Love.
"She didn't look like a star to me," said one of the officers. "I calmed her down, because Courtney was really out of it."
Love appeared to have been alone in the apartment, the witnesses said.
"She's like, `Today's my birthday,'" the officer said. "She was really unhappy. Her apartment is a wreck."
But when the officers left, Love seemed almost cheerful.
"When we left she was looking out the window," the officer said. "She actually waved at me."
Greg Benjamin, a friend who went to buy Love cigarettes and juice Friday afternoon, said he did not notice anything out of the ordinary. Still, he said, "She understandably has some big concerns right now."
Love was fighting with medical attendants as they brought her out on the stretcher, wit-nesses said. Yelena Mironova, an artist who works across the street from her apartment, did not find the incident funny.
"It's really sad," she said. "You don't expect for people to be alone on their birthday, being swarmed by paparazzi and then taken away in an ambulance."
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of