British music company EMI reported a loss of US$1.2 billion in its first year as part of the private equity group Terra Firma, news reports said Saturday.
Revenues dropped by 19 percent to US$2.3 billion in the business year ending on March 31, according to earnings data released the previous day in an annual review by Maltby Capital, through which investor Guy Hands’ Terra Firma owns EMI Music.
The loss, which ballooned from US$457 million the previous year, is largely due to financing costs, asset writedowns and restructuring costs, the Financial Times reported.
Jury selection was completed Thursday for the murder retrial of legendary music producer Phil Spector, and main arguments in the case will be heard beginning next Wednesday, court sources said.
Spector, the eccentric musical genius who created the famous Wall of Sound recording technique, was accused of shooting dead an actress in his Los Angeles mansion five years ago.
He avoided conviction after a marathon, six-month trial last year that ended with a jury deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of finding him guilty, and prosecutors decided to launch a new case against him.
The new jury consists of seven men and five women. Six replacement jurors must be chosen before Wednesday, when the court hears opening statements by the defense and the public prosecutor.
The trial at Los Angeles Superior Court is expected to last between three and four months, and the fabled producer faces a minimum 15 years to life in prison if he is found guilty of second degree murder.
Prosecutors are seeking to convict Spector, 68, of murdering actress Lana Clarkson, who was found dead in the foyer of the fabled producer’s home in the early hours of Feb. 3, 2003.
At his first trial, prosecutors alleged that Spector shot Clarkson as she attempted to leave his home after meeting him for the first time only hours earlier at the Hollywood nightclub where she worked.
Defense lawyers said Clarkson, 40, best-known for her role in Roger Corman’s 1985 cult classic The Barbarian Queen but whose career had stalled at the time of her death, killed herself.
Spector is regarded as one of the most influential figures in pop music history. In the early 1960s he was responsible for hits including Da Doo Ron Ron, Be My Baby and You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin.
US supergroup Guns N’Roses will unveil their first original album in 17 years next month with the release of long-awaited work Chinese Democracy, a statement said Thursday.
The long-delayed album will go on sale in the US on Nov. 23 while the title track Chinese Democracy has already been released to radio, the band’s managers said.
The album is Guns N’ Roses’ first since the 1991 release of Use of Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II.
“The release of Chinese Democracy marks a historic moment in rock ‘n’ roll,” co-managers Irving Azoff and Andy Gould said. “Guns N’ Roses fans have every reason to celebrate, for this is only the beginning.”
Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose is the only member of the band’s 1991 line-up to feature on the new album, which will include 14 tracks.
The band has sold 90 million albums worldwide, with 42 million in the US alone, with the group’s seminal Appetite for Destruction — featuring hits Welcome to the Jungle and Sweet Child o’Mine — its most famous.
Veteran comedian Jerry Lewis is under fire again for making an anti-gay slur on Australian television similar to one he apologized for using on his annual US telethon a year ago.
The 82-year-old King of Comedy dropped the slur when he was asked by a Network Ten national TV reporter following a press conference in Sydney on Friday for his opinion on the Australian nation sport of cricket.
“Oh, cricket? It’s a fag game. What are you, nuts?’’ Lewis replied.
The network broadcast the comment in full on its Friday evening news bulletin along with footage of Lewis handling an imaginary cricket bat with an effeminate gesture.
Lewis apologized in September last year for using the term “illiterate faggot’’ in Las Vegas during his annual Labor Day telethon that raises money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
In a statement released a day later, he described the slur as a “bad choice of words.’’ New York-based media discrimination watchdog Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD, called for Lewis to again apologize.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
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