The Star Online: Entertainment: Music
The Star Online: Entertainment: Music |
| Beyonce, Madonna team up for women at London gig Posted: 29 May 2013 02:53 AM PDT LONDON (Reuters) - Singers Beyonce and Madonna, activist Gloria Steinem and Bishop Desmond Tutu will be among big names reaching out to a billion people from a pop concert in London on Saturday with a message of empowerment for women across the planet. The Sound Of Change Live gig headlined by Beyonce, Florence + the Machine and Jennifer Lopez will be broadcast live from Twickenham sports stadium to 150 countries, and on primetime TV in the United States the following day, organisers said on Tuesday. The four-hour concert could fund at least 120 projects supporting women and girls in more than 70 nations, if all the tickets are sold, they said. Organised by the Chime for Change campaign, started by Italian fashion house Gucci, every ticket buyer will be able to choose which project their ticket will fund in what the campaign said was a world first for such a venture. Madonna will be a presenter at the gig alongside other musicians, public figures, activists, film directors and actors including Indian stars Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan. "Sixty percent of the children in the world not in school are girls," Madonna said. "Two-thirds of the world's illiterate are women. I do not accept this. We need to change this and we will change this." In addition to performances and collaborations from artists, the concert will serve as a platform to broadcast inspirational and provocative films and stories highlighting women's issues around the world. |
| Pussy Riot member taken to hospital after hunger strike Posted: 29 May 2013 02:35 AM PDT MOSCOW (Reuters) - A member of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot who went on hunger strike in jail last week after being barred from a parole hearing was hospitalised on Tuesday, the husband of another band member said. Maria Alyokhina, 24, and two other band members were sentenced to two years in prison after they broke into Moscow's main cathedral last year to perform a profanity-laced punk song against President Vladimir Putin. "Today the prison administration decided to put her in the hospital after being on hunger strike for a week," Pyotr Verzilov, husband of imprisoned Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, said from the prison town of Berezniki, more than 1,000km northeast of Moscow. He said she was doing well and that she was receiving treatment alone after prison authorities had cleared out an entire wing of the prison hospital. The prison confirmed she had been taken to hospital, with its press office being quoted by Itar Tass as saying: "Her blood pressure fell and she was given the necessary injections." Verzilov said she had given up food and only had drunk water since the day of her parole hearing when she was denied permission to go to the courtroom and was given access only over video link. She was denied parole. Alyokhina and her two bandmates were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred last August after a trial seen by Putin's opponents as part of a clampdown on dissent during a third term in power he began in May 2012. The third woman jailed, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was freed last October when a judge suspended her sentence on appeal. Western governments and entertainers including Madonna said the sentence was disproportionate but Putin, a former KGB spy who has cultivated close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, said the state needed to protect the faithful. |
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