Colombian superstar Shakira’s Caribbean home city of Barranquilla on Tuesday unveiled a 6.5m hip-swaying statue in her honor.
The towering bronze and aluminum creation depicts the singer in a bikini top, bare middle and a long, flowing skirt, her hands clasped over her head and one hip jutting out in one of her characteristic dance moves.
“Hips that do not lie, a unique talent, a voice that moves masses,” reads the inscription at the base of the sculpture unveiled on the banks of the Magdalena River at a ceremony attended by Shakira’s parents, William Mebarak and Nidia Ripoll. Hips Don’t Lie is the title of one of 46-year-old Shakira’s award-winning songs.
Photo: AFP
On X, formerly Twitter, the singer thanked sculptor Yino Marquez and his art student collaborators for “this example of the enormous artistic talent of the people of my country.”
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, an icon of Latina girl power, has sold about 80 million albums worldwide and won three Grammy awards.
She has recently been in the news for completely different reasons: She is being investigated over unpaid taxes in Spain and paying millions of euros in settlements.
Photo: AFP
In 2021, Shakira was named in the “Pandora Papers” leaks, which revealed the wealth and tax avoidance strategies of the global elite.
She has since released a new hit song with Argentine DJ Bizarrap that has been viewed more than 666 million times on YouTube and won Song of the Year at the Latin Grammy Awards.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung (袁國勇) has done battle with some of the world’s worst threats, including the SARS virus he helped isolate and identify, and he has a warning. Another pandemic is inevitable and could exact damage far worse than COVID-19 pandemic, said the soft-spoken scientist sometimes thought of as Hong Kong’s answer to former US National Institutes of Health director Anthony Fauci. “Both the public and [world] leaders must admit that another pandemic will come, and probably sooner than you anticipate,” he said at the city’s Queen Mary Hospital, where he works and teaches. “Why I make such a horrifying prediction
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
INDICTED: US prosecutors said Sue Mi Terry accepted fancy handbags, luxury dinners and thousands of dollars in payments from South Korean intelligence A former CIA employee and senior official at the US National Security Council has been charged with allegedly serving as a secret agent for the South Korean National Intelligence Service, the US Department of Justice said. Sue Mi Terry accepted luxury goods, including fancy handbags, and expensive dinners at sushi restaurants in exchange for advocating South Korean government positions during media appearances, sharing nonpublic information with intelligence officers and facilitating access for South Korean officials to US government officials, an indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan, New York, says. She also admitted to the FBI that she served as a source