Lindsay Lohan was freed from a suburban Los Angeles jail late Friday night, well short of the nearly month-long stay a judge had intended for the actress following a failed drug test.
Lohan was released posting US$300,000 bail, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said early Saturday.
The actress is not entirely free. She will be required to wear an ankle alcohol monitor and stay away from establishments that primarily sell alcohol.
She is also due back in court on Oct. 22, when the judge who curtly sent her to jail will decide what her punishment will be for failing a drug test roughly two weeks after he released her early from rehab.
Friday marked the third time Lohan has been sent to jail in a three-year-old drug and drunken driving case. She spent 84 minutes at the jail in 2007 and 14 days of a three-month sentence earlier this summer.
After news of her positive drug test broke last week, Lohan seemed to acknowledge an addiction problem on her Twitter feed.
“Substance abuse is a disease, which unfortunately doesn’t go away over night,” Lohan posted on Twitter on Sept. 17. “This is certainly a setback for me but I am taking responsibility for my actions and I’m prepared to face the consequences.”
A star who is putting his fame to better use is Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who will help raise global awareness about India’s dwindling number of tigers. DiCaprio and India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh met at a reception Friday in New York organized by the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, an inter-governmental organization.
Earlier this year, Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan joined a campaign to protect the tiger.
On what would have been his 80th birthday, Ray Charles joined the likes of past presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan with his own namesake library in Southern California.
The Ray Charles Memorial Library officially opened its doors Thursday night. Housed in the studio and office building Charles built in South Los Angeles in the early 1960s, the library features interactive exhibits about the musician’s life and career.
Its main aim is to educate and inspire disenfranchised children who have seen arts education cut from their school curricula, said president of the library the Ray Charles Foundation Valerie Ervin.
For his latest album, guitar god Carlos Santana took on some timeless songs from others. Guitar Heaven ... The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time was created by Santana and music mogul Clive Davis as a collection of covers of some of the best known songs in rock.
“These songs ... to me, are like women that belonged to Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton,” said Santana in a recent interview. “I had the courage to take them out on a date. I feel very grateful, and pretty certain that if I take them out they will go out with me again.”
Santana is also ready to make a biographical film about his life. After being approached by Hollywood many times, Santana has given brothers Peter and Benjamin Bratt the green light. Benjamin Bratt is set to star in and direct the film, aiming for release in 2011.
Legendary Swedish pop group Abba has stopped the far-right Danish People’s Party (DPP) from using their Mamma Mi hit at meetings, the studio which holds the rights to the song said Friday.
“It came to our knowledge that the Danish People’s Party had used in some way the song Mamma Mia, and Abba does not allow their music to be used in any political context at all,” said Olle Roennbaeck, the head of film and television at Universal Music publishing.
The party had replaced the lyrics of Mamma Mia with “Mamma Pia” in honor of party leader Pia Kjaersgaard.
“We told them to quit doing this immediately and the party came back and said they would not use the song” anymore, Roennbaeck said. Roennbaeck said the party, which it contacted by email, immediately admitted wrongdoing and had apologized.
Following the shock complete failure of all the recall votes against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on July 26, pan-blue supporters and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were giddy with victory. A notable exception was KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), who knew better. At a press conference on July 29, he bowed deeply in gratitude to the voters and said the recalls were “not about which party won or lost, but were a great victory for the Taiwanese voters.” The entire recall process was a disaster for both the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The only bright spot for
Water management is one of the most powerful forces shaping modern Taiwan’s landscapes and politics. Many of Taiwan’s township and county boundaries are defined by watersheds. The current course of the mighty Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) was largely established by Japanese embankment building during the 1918-1923 period. Taoyuan is dotted with ponds constructed by settlers from China during the Qing period. Countless local civic actions have been driven by opposition to water projects. Last week something like 2,600mm of rain fell on southern Taiwan in seven days, peaking at over 2,800mm in Duona (多納) in Kaohsiung’s Maolin District (茂林), according to
Aug. 11 to Aug. 17 Those who never heard of architect Hsiu Tse-lan (修澤蘭) must have seen her work — on the reverse of the NT$100 bill is the Yangmingshan Zhongshan Hall (陽明山中山樓). Then-president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) reportedly hand-picked her for the job and gave her just 13 months to complete it in time for the centennial of Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen’s birth on Nov. 12, 1966. Another landmark project is Garden City (花園新城) in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) — Taiwan’s first mountainside planned community, which Hsiu initiated in 1968. She was involved in every stage, from selecting
As last month dawned, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was in a good position. The recall campaigns had strong momentum, polling showed many Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers at risk of recall and even the KMT was bracing for losing seats while facing a tsunami of voter fraud investigations. Polling pointed to some of the recalls being a lock for victory. Though in most districts the majority was against recalling their lawmaker, among voters “definitely” planning to vote, there were double-digit margins in favor of recall in at least five districts, with three districts near or above 20 percent in
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