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.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
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