Shakira says she put career ‘on hold’ so ex-partner Gerard Pique could play football
Shakira has said she put her “career on hold” for a long time to be with her former partner Gerard Pique while he played football.
The Colombian popstar and former professional Spanish footballer were together for 11 years before announcing their separation in June 2022 and have two children.
Shakira, 47, is due to release her first album in seven years – Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, which translates to Women No Longer Cry.
Reflecting on the time that has passed since she released 2017’s El Dorado, she told The Times: “For a long time I put my career on hold, to be next to Gerard, so he could play football.
“There was a lot of sacrifice for love.”
The upcoming album represents “the transformation of pain into creativity, frustration into productivity, anger into passion, vulnerability into resilience”, she said.
She added: “There were so many pieces of my life that crumbled in front of my eyes and I had to rebuild myself in a way, picking up the bones from the floor and putting them all together. And the glue that kept it all together was music.”
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December 2023: Shakira honoured with statue in Colombia
The album includes her hit single Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53, which has been referred to as a “diss track” aimed at the 37-year-old former Barcelona footballer.
Another track on the album titled Ultima (Last) also hears her sing, “Surely with time you’ll regret it / And some day you’ll want to come back to my door”, according to The Times.
Asked if this was also in relation to Pique, she replied: “Voldemort, that one that shouldn’t be mentioned? It’s hopefully the last song that I will write about this, and to him.”
She added: “I felt that there was still something there, stuck in my throat, and I needed to get it out.
“I played it to the marketing head at Sony and he started crying. I’d never seen a man cry in my studio before.”
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Over the last couple of years, the singer has also been fighting a tax dispute case in Spain, accused of failing to pay €14.5m (about £12.7m) in taxes between 2012 and 2014.
In November, she reached a deal with authorities on the morning the trial was due to begin and agreed to pay a fine of more than £6m.
Shakira said her lawyers had been “confident” the court would have ruled in her favour following a trial, but she decided to resolve the matter beforehand “with the best interest of my kids at heart, who do not want to see their mom sacrifice her personal wellbeing in this fight”.
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Om Fahad: Iraqi social media influencer shot dead by gunman on motorbike who posed as food delivery rider – report
A well-known Iraqi social media influencer has reportedly been shot dead in her car by a gunman on a motorbike.
Om Fahad, whose real name is Ghufran Sawadi, was killed outside her home in Baghdad’s Zayouna district on Friday, according to the AFP news agency, citing security officials.
It appears the unidentified attacker pretended to be delivering food to the victim, one security source said.
Om Fahad, who has nearly half a million TikTok followers, became famous for posting light-hearted videos where she dances to Iraqi music.
Six days ago, she shared footage of herself driving in a car and also posing in front of a mirror. They have each been watched hundreds of thousands of times.
The influencer was sentenced to six months in prison in February last year for sharing videos that a court ruled contained “indecent speech that undermines modesty and public morality”.
A campaign was launched in 2023 by the Iraqi government to clamp down on social media content which broke the country’s “morals and traditions”.
The interior ministry set up a committee to look for “offensive” clips on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube, with several influencers being arrested.
“This type of content is no less dangerous than organised crime,” the ministry declared in a promotional video which asked the public to help by reporting such content.
“It is one of the causes of the destruction of the Iraqi family and society.”
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Speaking last year, interior ministry spokesman Saad Maan argued the morality campaign has “nothing to do with freedom of expression”.
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In 2018, gunmen in Baghdad shot dead Tara Fares, who was a model and influencer.
After years of war and sectarian conflict following the 2003 US invasion that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq has returned to some semblance of normality despite sporadic violence, political instability and corruption.
But civil liberties, particularly among women and sexual minorities, are still constrained in a conservative and male-dominated society.
R Kelly’s challenge against a 20-year sentence for child sex convictions has been quashed by an appeals court.
The singer was correctly sentenced to 20 years in prison, a Chicago court ruled on Friday.
He was convicted in 2022 on three charges of producing child sexual abuse images and three charges of enticement of minors for sex.
In his appeal, Kelly, 57, argued Illinois’ old statute of limitations – which required prosecution of child sex crime charges within 10 years – should have applied, rather than the current law permitting charges while an accuser is still alive.
The appeals court rejected this, labelling it an attempt by Kelly to elude the charges entirely after “employing a complex scheme to keep victims quiet”.
He also argued that charges involving one accuser should have been tried separately from the charges tied to three other accusers due to video evidence that became a focal point of the Chicago trial.
Prosecutors have said the video showed Kelly abusing a girl. The accuser, only identified as Jane, testified for the first time that she was 14 when the video was taken.
The three-judge panel from the appeals court noted jurors acquitted Kelly on seven of the 13 counts against him “even after viewing those abhorrent tapes”.
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In a written statement, Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said they plan to seek a US Supreme Court review of the decision and “pursue all of his appellate remedies until we free R Kelly”.
“We are disappointed in the ruling, but our fight is far from over,” she said.
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