Jay-Z joins Beyonce show in London
Beyonce was joined on stage by husband Jay-Z as she took her Mrs Carter world tour to London for the second time.
The couple duetted on Drunk In Love, an explicit ballad that drew complaints from viewers when they performed it at last month's Grammy Awards.
They shared a lingering hug as the song ended, leaving Beyonce to finish the remainder of her two-hour set solo.
The Mrs Carter Show was last year's second highest-earning tour behind Bon Jovi, earning just over $188m (£112m).
It first came to the UK in April 2013 and was supposed to promote a new album. However the record remained unfinished until December, when it was finally released, without warning, on iTunes.
The stealth strategy paid off, with the self-titled, x-rated record selling almost a million copies in 24 hours and earning the pop star the best reviews of her career.
The tour has since been overhauled and, by Friday's date at London's O2 Arena, a third of the set list was culled from the album, with a raunchy sequence in the middle of the show featuring the album's most explicit tracks Blow, Partition and Drunk In Love.
But the star, who employs an 11 piece all-female band, also made a virtue of her feminist credentials.
After opening with the empowerment anthem Run The World (Girls), she segued into the defiant album cut Flawless, which quotes author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's talk We Should All Be Feminists.
The star's show makes extensive use of back-lit silhouettes, pyrotechnics and a mobile, stage-wide video screen.
During an intricately choreographed Baby Mama, Beyonce and her dancers appeared to emerge from, disappear into and interact with pre-filmed graphics, a neat illusion she first pulled off at the 2011 Billboard Awards.
Before settling into a groove, the star's show flitted restlessly between fragments of songs and video clips.
Even towards the climax, her signature song, Crazy In Love, was dispensed with in under a minute before giving way to another musical interlude.
Beyonce's sheer stage presence held the show together, whether she was commanding her band to turn on a pinhead or engaging the audience in a sing-along during Irreplaceable.
And her new material showcases an unparalleled variety of vocal styles, ranges and phrasing, from the hushed and sultry Haunted to the urban swagger of Yonce.
As the show drew to a close, she recalled that she had first played London with Destiny's Child in 1997 and picked out a few familiar faces who had been coming to her shows since.
"I'm so honoured to be here again," she said. "Thank you guys for having me. Thank you for saving up money to come to the show, for waiting in line and making such a beautiful sound."
Source-BBC
Friends star Lisa Kudrow must pay ex-manager $1.6m
Friends star Lisa Kudrow must pay her former manager $1.6m (£955,000), after a jury agreed she owed him money from earnings received from repeats.
Scott Howard worked as Kudrow's manager for 16 years, before she terminated their contract in 2007.
Howard took legal action in 2008 claiming he was owed five percent of Kudrow's earnings from continuing residuals of work negotiated by him.
The actress has denied agreeing on the payments and is planning to appeal
The 50-year-old is best known for playing Phoebe Buffay in the hit show Friends, which ran from 1994 to 2004.
A jury in Los Angeles ruled in favour of Howard following testimony from expert witness Martin Bauer, a long-standing Hollywood agent and manager, whom the judge - who had initially ruled in Kudrow's favour - allowed on appeal.
The witness said he had never had a commission cut off because he had been fired. "I would never make that deal," Bauer told the jury. "The only consequence of a termination is on future projects."
Bauer testified that it was common practice in the industry to take a cut of earnings made from ongoing repeats.
In the UK alone, Friends was on constant rotation on Channel 4 and E4 for seven years - between the end of the show in 2004 and 2011.
It is now shown on Comedy Central.
Kudrow claimed she and Scott had an oral agreement which stated that the actress would pay a cut only on the first round of repeats. In court, she claimed he had at first refused her terms, but later relented.
However since no terms were submitted in writing, the jury found in favour of Scott claims that Kudrow was liable for breach of contract.
"The jury's verdict is merely one step in the legal process," said Kudrow's lawyer, Gerard Sauer.
"This case ultimately will be resolved at the appellate level. Ms. Kudrow has faith in the judicial system, and she believes that the eventual outcome of this contractual dispute will be in her favour."
Speculation had suggested the actress could be ordered to pay as much as $8m (£4.8m) dollars to her former manager.
The manager earned $11m (£6.6m) during their long working relationship, with Kudrow earning more than $1m (£598,000) an episode by the end of Friends' run in 2004.
Source-BBC
Michelle Obama to appear in Parks and Recreation
US First Lady Michelle Obama is set to appear on cult television comedy Parks and Recreation.
Her White House office confirmed Mrs Obama will guest star in the NBC show's season six finale.
Mrs Obama's cameo, in an episode titled Moving Up, will centre on her campaign against child obesity.
"Time to get real about Pawnee's obesity… @FLOTUS is coming to town for our #ParksandRec season finale Thursday, April 24!," the show tweeted.
FLOTUS is an acronym for First Lady Of The United States and Pawnee, Indiana is the fictional town where the show takes place - home to public servant Leslie Knope.
The show's star, Amy Poehler - who plays Knope - joined Mrs Obama's campaign earlier this month when she appeared at a Let's Move event in Miami.
Mrs Obama is not the first US politician to appear on the show - US Vice President Joe Biden made a cameo on the show in 2012.
Three further senators, including presidential runner John McCain, have also guest starred in the show, which is currently in its sixth season.
Executive producer Michael Schur told the Hollywood Reporter last month that he was still hoping to persuade Hillary Clinton to make an appearance on the show.
"I always imagined the perfect ending to the series - and I hope it's not for a while - would be a casual piece of B-roll where Leslie is walking through a building in Washington, DC, and passes Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton says, 'Leslie.' Leslie says, 'Secretary Clinton,' and keeps walking."
"That might still be five seasons away, but that's the trajectory I would like Leslie to enjoy."
Regular stars Rob Lowe and Rashida Jones are due to leave the series at the end of season six. Season three of Parks and Rec is currently showing on BBC Four in the UK.
Souce-BBC
Citigroup profit hit by Mexican fraud
The US bank Citigroup has lowered its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings after discovering fraud in its Mexican subsidiary.
The bank said that 2013 net income would be reduced to $13.7bn (£8.2bn) from $13.9bn.
Citigroup said that it believed the fraud was an "isolated incident".
Chief executive Michael Corbat said the company had been "responding forcefully" and it was working with law enforcement agencies in Mexico.
The fraud centres on short-term loans made by Citigroup's subsidiary, Banco Nacional de Mexico (Banamex), to a Mexican oil services company called Oceanografia (OSA).
In February, Mexico's anti-corruption agency banned OSA from bidding on government contracts for 21 months because it had violated an agreement with the country's state-owned oil giant, Pemex.
As a result, Citigroup and Pemex then investigated their accounts relating to OSA, discovering some of them were fraudulent.
"It appears that invoices from OSA were falsified to represent that Pemex had approved them. A Banamex employee processed them, and as much as $400m was misappropriated throughout the course of the fraud," said Mr Corbat in a memo to his staff.
"The financial impact will lower our 2013 net income by approximately $235m. The impact to our credibility is harder to calculate," he added.
Mr Corbat said he was working with Mexican authorities to "initiate criminal actions in connection with this matter that, in addition to imposing just penalties on the responsible parties, may allow us to recover damages".
He said: "There will be accountability for those who perpetrated this despicable crime and any employees who enable it."
Just two weeks ago, he wrote to his staff stressing the importance of ethics in the firm, saying that "five years after a crisis in which the financial services industry shouldered its fair share of blame - there are some people who still don't get it".
Citigroup is the US's third largest bank in terms of assets.
Cyprus bailout hit as privatisation bill fails
International efforts to bail out Cyprus' debt-laden economy have been thrown into doubt after its parliament rejected a key part of the plan.
As part of the 10bn-euro (£8.25bn; $13.7bn) deal with the EU and International Monetary Fund, lawmakers have until 5 March to pass a bill allowing state firms to be privatised.
But on Thursday, they threw it out, jeopardising the next tranche of cash.
The government says it will re-submit the bill with some amendments.
The deal was agreed in March last year in an attempt to stave off the collapse of Cyprus's banking sector and the wider economy.
It included moves to restructure the banks, along with other measures such as tax rises and privatisations.
Late on Thursday, the privatisation bill was narrowly defeated after parliament split 25-25 on the vote, with five abstentions. This meant the legislation failed to pass.
The vote took place as hundreds of people opposed to privatisation staged a protest outside the parliament building.
A government spokesman, Christos Stylanides, said the bill would be amended to reflect concerns over workers' rights after privatisation.
He said the new version would be submitted to the House of Representatives on Friday.
Source-BBC
Chinatown denies unfair competition with Dominicans
A representative of Santo Domingo’s Chinese community on Friday denied that Chinese retailers on the busy Duarte Av. compete unfairly, as Dominican counterparts claim.
Marino Joa said Dominican merchants acquire merchandise from the U.S. through Panama, which he says make garment and footwear soar costs from Customs duties.
He said their gods come directly from China without intermediaries allowing Dominicans to buy them at good prices.
Joa said he expect new Chinese investors to come to the country, because it benefits both nations, adding that major exports of Dominican rum, tobacco and amber will continue to China.
Source-Dominican Today
LIME investing $30 million
To keep up with the speeds that people are requiring, LIME is investing, over this year and next, over $30 million locally to upgrade its system, according to LIME Cayman Islands CEO Bill McCabe in this weeks interview with CNS Business Video. The ability of Cayman to compete with the rest of the world, especially in the high-end industries that thrive here, is highly dependent on the ability to connect and communicate with the rest of the world, and that means that the demands for speed and really good infrastructure is tremendous, he said.Looking to the future, he said that they were very interested in Health City Cayman Islands’ plans for telemedical services, noting that telecommunications would be at the core of that for HCCI to be able to provide diagnostics and medical services.
In the last few months, he noted, the firm has added a tremendous amount of capacity and resilience on both the Maya-1 and the CBUS cables, its two main cables going off the island in order to secure in our off-island capacity.
The move to LTE, which is the latest version of mobile technology, was a very big investment which puts Cayman in the top 20% of mobile networks around the world. “We’ve got 100% population coverage on that and it's a really important step to keep people connected on the move,” McCabe told CNS Business Video.
The third major investment involves moving from a copper-based industry, which has served the world very well for the last 100 years, to a fibre-based industry. This, said McCabe, “is a once in a multi-generation change to the infrastructure on the island.”
“Just in the last six months, the demands that have been made on our data networks has doubled, and that happens every six months,” he said. But their customers “don’t let up. They want it faster, they want greater bandwidth and greater connectivity, and that’s in the business world as well as the (individual) consumer.”
“After every christmas we see an uplift in the data demands because people are getting new ipads, tablets, phablets, smartphones, laptops, X-Boxes and smart TVs, and all of these require connectivity and increase the demand on the networks,” he said.
Cayman is in the top 10% of countries for people’s demands for devices like smartphones, so a very high proportion of customers are demanding connectivity all the time wherever they are, McCabe explained.
“But if you look at the rest of the world … there are over 2 billion customers connected via mobile devices but only 700 million connected via fixed line internet, so having connectivity on the move is incredibly important, not just here but around the world.”
Looking into the future of telecommunications involves “a bit of crystal ball gazing”, he said, “But if we look at where we’ve come from, just ten years ago there was no YouTube, for example, but right now there are over 100 hours of content uploaded every minute of the day.” So the evolution of telecommunications has created incredible demands on data networks by both individual consumers and the business community.
In terms of education, people are getting degrees online, so they are able to hold down jobs and get their education at the same time, and he also noted the government’s stated intention to develop e-government.
“Everyone's heard of Google eye glasses,” he said, “but who knows what’s going to be around the corner.” the possibilities are for everything will be connected all the time, from fridges to TVs to cars to everyday appliances to traffic lights.
“There are some forecasts that by 2020 there will be somewhere between 50 and 75 billion connected devices around the world, which shows incredible growth and ever-increasing demands. The job of telecommunications is to ensure that we have the bandwidth and the connectivity available for these new industries to thrive and develop because it forms a foundation of those new industries,” McCabe said.
Source-CNS Business
Cuban 5 Spy Released from US Prison
A second member of the so-called "Cuban Five" spy ring was released from a United States prison after being jailed for more than 15 years.
Officials say 50-year-old Fernando Gonzalez completed his sentence Thursday at a prison in Safford, Arizona. Gonzalez was turned over immediately to immigration officials to be deported to Cuba.
Gonzalez, who also goes by the name "Ruben Campa," was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998 along with four other Cuban agents. All were convicted in 2001 of 26 counts of spying on behalf of Fidel Castro's government.
Trial testimony showed the five sought to infiltrate military bases, including the U.S. Southern Command's headquarters. They also spied on Cuban exiles opposed to the communist government of then-president Fidel Castro. Havana says the agents did not threaten U.S. sovereignty and were only monitoring militant exiles to prevent terrorist attacks in Cuba.
Another agent, Rene Gonzalez, was released in 2011 and returned to Cuba after serving more than 13 years in a U.S. prison. He renounced his U.S. citizenship to avoid serving the mandatory three-year parole in Florida.
One of the three remaining agents, Gerardo Hernandez, is serving a double life sentence after being convicted of involvement in shooting down two small U.S. planes off the Cuban coast in 1996.
The two other agents are still in jail: Antonio Guerrero is serving 21 years and 10 months and is due for release in September 2017, while Ramon Labanino is serving 30 years and is due for release in October 2024.
Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.
Holiday May Take Heat Out of Venezuela Crisis
Venezuelans began a week-long national holiday on Thursday as some protests still simmer, but President Nicolas Maduro's government is hoping the break will take the heat out of the nation's worst unrest in a decade.
The 51-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez brought forward by two days a long weekend national holiday for Carnival when Venezuelans traditionally abandon cities and head for Caribbean coast beaches to relax and party.
There will be another day off for the March 5 anniversary of Chavez's death from cancer, meaning a week-long break that officials hope will dampen student-led street protests against the government.
In the capital, Caracas, which has seen most of the at least 13 fatalities from this month's unrest, opposition supporters gathered in wealthy eastern neighborhoods.
In familiar scenes from the last two weeks, when one group of demonstrators tried to block a six-lane highway that runs nearby, security forces fired teargas to disperse them.
“How can you enjoy carnival when people are dying?” read one banner waved by students at drivers in eastern Caracas as many people began to hit the highways for the coast.
In the city center, red-clad Maduro supporters rallied in remembrance of deadly price riots 25 years ago, which the president says helped propel Chavez to power a decade later.
The students want Maduro to quit over grievances ranging from high inflation and shocking crime rates to shortages of basic food and alleged repression of political rivals.
Though they have presented the biggest challenge to his 10-month-old administration and the worst unrest since street rallies against Chavez a decade ago, there is no sign Maduro could be ousted.
On the contrary, he seems to be regaining the initiative by offering dialog with foes and consolidating his leadership of the Socialist Party by uniting factions against a common enemy.
About 150 people have been injured during the two-week crisis, and more than 500 people arrested, authorities say.
Top Castro Aide Turned Dissident Huber Matos Dies at 95
Huber Matos, a top Cuban revolutionary who was sent to prison for 20 years for turning against Fidel Castro, died Thursday in Miami.
His family says Matos suffered a heart attack. He was 95.
Matos was a teacher and farmer when he joined the Castro-led rebels plotting to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Matos rode side-by-side with a triumphant Castro as they entered Havana on New Year's Day, 1959.
But Matos wrote in his autobiography that he quickly became disenchanted with Castro. He said it became clear that the new Cuban government was moving away from democracy and heading toward a Marxist dictatorship.
Castro ordered Matos imprisoned when he tried to leave the government.
Matos was freed in 1979, and eventually settled in Miami, where he became a Cuban opposition leader.