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.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and the country’s other political groups dare not offend religious groups, says Chen Lih-ming (陳立民), founder of the Taiwan Anti-Religion Alliance (台灣反宗教者聯盟). “It’s the same in other democracies, of course, but because political struggles in Taiwan are extraordinarily fierce, you’ll see candidates visiting several temples each day ahead of elections. That adds impetus to religion here,” says the retired college lecturer. In Japan’s most recent election, the Liberal Democratic Party lost many votes because of its ties to the Unification Church (“the Moonies”). Chen contrasts the progress made by anti-religion movements in
Taiwan doesn’t have a lot of railways, but its network has plenty of history. The government-owned entity that last year became the Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) has been operating trains since 1891. During the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule, the colonial government made huge investments in rail infrastructure. The northern port city of Keelung was connected to Kaohsiung in the south. New lines appeared in Pingtung, Yilan and the Hualien-Taitung region. Railway enthusiasts exploring Taiwan will find plenty to amuse themselves. Taipei will soon gain its second rail-themed museum. Elsewhere there’s a number of endearing branch lines and rolling-stock collections, some
Last week the State Department made several small changes to its Web information on Taiwan. First, it removed a statement saying that the US “does not support Taiwan independence.” The current statement now reads: “We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. We expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, free from coercion, in a manner acceptable to the people on both sides of the Strait.” In 2022 the administration of Joe Biden also removed that verbiage, but after a month of pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), reinstated it. The American
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus convener Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) and some in the deep blue camp seem determined to ensure many of the recall campaigns against their lawmakers succeed. Widely known as the “King of Hualien,” Fu also appears to have become the king of the KMT. In theory, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) outranks him, but Han is supposed to be even-handed in negotiations between party caucuses — the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) says he is not — and Fu has been outright ignoring Han. Party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) isn’t taking the lead on anything while Fu
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