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Shakira, Shakira: Latina Superstar with Tax Woes

Colombian singer Shakira poses with her Record of the Year, Best Pop Song, Best Urban Interpretation awards during the 24th Annual Latin Grammy Awards ceremony at the Conference and Exhibition Centre (FIBES) in Sevilla on November 16, 2023. (AFP)
Colombian singer Shakira poses with her Record of the Year, Best Pop Song, Best Urban Interpretation awards during the 24th Annual Latin Grammy Awards ceremony at the Conference and Exhibition Centre (FIBES) in Sevilla on November 16, 2023. (AFP)
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Shakira, Shakira: Latina Superstar with Tax Woes

Colombian singer Shakira poses with her Record of the Year, Best Pop Song, Best Urban Interpretation awards during the 24th Annual Latin Grammy Awards ceremony at the Conference and Exhibition Centre (FIBES) in Sevilla on November 16, 2023. (AFP)
Colombian singer Shakira poses with her Record of the Year, Best Pop Song, Best Urban Interpretation awards during the 24th Annual Latin Grammy Awards ceremony at the Conference and Exhibition Centre (FIBES) in Sevilla on November 16, 2023. (AFP)

Shapeshifting Colombian superstar Shakira is in comeback mode after a torrid, highly publicized split from her footballer ex, Gerard Pique.

But the trials of the woman dubbed the queen of Latin music since her 2005 smash hit "Hips Don't Lie" are far from over, with all eyes on Barcelona, where she will take the stand on November 20 on tax fraud charges.

Prosecutors are seeking a jail sentence of eight years and two months and a fine of nearly 24 million euros ($26 million) for the pint-sized 46-year-old diva, who previously lived in Barcelona with Pique.

They accuse her of defrauding the state of 14.5 million euros on income earned between 2012 and 2014, charges denied by the singer who says she only moved to Spain full time in 2015.

In September, she was hit with a second investigation into alleged tax fraud, this time amounting to a suspected 6.6 million euros.

Shakira now lives in Miami, with her two sons, Milan and Sasha.

Dark times

The "Whenever, Wherever" songstress and "Waka Waka" performer at the 2010 South Africa World Cup has sold some 80 million albums worldwide and won three Grammy awards.

But the last few years have not been easy for Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll.

In 2021, she was named in the "Pandora Papers" leaks, which revealed the wealth and tax avoidance strategies of the global rich, in Shakira's case relating to a residence in the Bahamas.

And in June 2022 she announced her split from Spanish football hero Gerard Pique, with whom she has two children, ending what had been one of the world's most famous celebrity couples.

Around the same time, her elderly father suffered a bad fall and sinister stalker-like messages were spraypainted outside her Barcelona home.

"Everything happened at once. My home was falling apart," she told People Magazine in 2023.

"I was finding out through the press that I had been betrayed while my dad was in ICU (intensive care).

"I thought I wasn't going to survive so much."

Picking herself up through her music, Shakira released a searing revenge song with Argentine DJ Bizarrap that has been viewed 645 million times on YouTube.

Slamming Pique and his new love interest, she sings: "You swapped a Ferrari for a Twingo/You swapped a Rolex for a Casio."

'Like a goat'

Her phenomenally successful career is a story of serial reinvention, from teen crooner to Colombian rock chick to Latina bombshell.

She grew up in a family of Arab descent in the Colombian port city of Barranquilla and began performing at the age of four, when she hopped up onto a table in a Middle Eastern restaurant and had the room clapping and cheering as she bellydanced.

"I fell in love with the sensation of being on stage," she told Britain's Guardian newspaper in a 2002 interview.

Her friends were less complimentary about her voice, declaring she sang "like a goat", but Shakira was undeterred, recording her first single "Magia" as a denim-clad 14-year-old pining for her first love.

Her breakthrough came in 1996 with her third album "Pies Descalzos", featuring a young rocker with jet black hair and a guitar slung across her shoulder.

Rise to superstardom

By 22, she had become Latin America's biggest pop star, with fans including Colombian Nobel literature prize laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who declared she had "invented her own brand of innocent sensuality".

To help her break out of Latin America, US-Cuban diva Gloria Estefan encouraged her to sing in English and in 2002 she went on a world tour with her first bilingual album, "Laundry Service".

She had become blonde by this point, mixed salsa and merengue with RnB, electro and hip-hop on chart-topping tracks like "Whenever, Wherever", and infused her routine with the head-spinning hip gyrations that would become her trademark.

By the time she got to the World Cup South Africa, where she met Pique and headlined the closing ceremony, she was a superstar.

In 2017, she temporarily lost her voice after suffering a hemorrhage on her right vocal cord and was forced to call off a world tour for seven months.

But she recovered and enjoyed a new career high in 2020 when she shared a half-time show with Jennifer Lopez during the Super Bowl.

This year she collaborated with one of her new rivals on the Colombian music scene, Karol G, on the reggaeton hit "TQG" (acronymn for "Too Big for You" in Spanish).

It included further jabs at Pique and hit the top spot on Spotify.

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Entertainment

First Bond Game in a Decade Hit by Two-month Delay

'007 First Light' depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill. Ina FASSBENDER / AFP
'007 First Light' depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill. Ina FASSBENDER / AFP
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First Bond Game in a Decade Hit by Two-month Delay

'007 First Light' depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill. Ina FASSBENDER / AFP
'007 First Light' depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill. Ina FASSBENDER / AFP

A Danish video game studio said it was delaying the release of the first James Bond video game in over a decade by two months to "refine the experience".

Fans will now have to wait until May 27 to play "007 First Light" featuring Ian Fleming's world-famous spy, after IO Interactive said on Tuesday it was postponing the launch to add some final touches.

"007 First Light is our most ambitious project to date, and the team has been fully focused on delivering an unforgettable James Bond experience," the Danish studio wrote on X.

Describing the game as "fully playable", IO Interactive said the two additional months would allow their team "to further polish and refine the experience", giving players "the strongest possible version at launch".

The game, which depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill, is set to feature "globe-trotting, spycraft, gadgets, car chases, and more", IO Interactive added.

It has been more than a decade since a video game inspired by Bond was released. The initial release date was scheduled for March 27.

Entertainment

Movie Review: An Electric Timothee Chalamet Is the Consummate Striver in Propulsive ‘Marty Supreme’

Timothee Chalamet attends the premiere of "Marty Supreme" at Regal Times Square on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP)
Timothee Chalamet attends the premiere of "Marty Supreme" at Regal Times Square on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP)
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Movie Review: An Electric Timothee Chalamet Is the Consummate Striver in Propulsive ‘Marty Supreme’

Timothee Chalamet attends the premiere of "Marty Supreme" at Regal Times Square on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP)
Timothee Chalamet attends the premiere of "Marty Supreme" at Regal Times Square on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP)

“Everybody wants to rule the world,” goes the Tears for Fears song we hear at a key point in “Marty Supreme,” Josh Safdie’s nerve-busting adrenaline jolt of a movie starring a never-better Timothee Chalamet.

But here’s the thing: everybody may want to rule the world, but not everybody truly believes they CAN. This, one could argue, is what separates the true strivers from the rest of us.

And Marty — played by Chalamet in a delicious synergy of actor, role and whatever fairy dust makes a performance feel both preordained and magically fresh — is a striver. With every fiber of his restless, wiry body. They should add him to the dictionary definition.

Needless to say, Marty is a New Yorker.

Also needless to say, Chalamet is a New Yorker.

And so is Safdie, a writer-director Chalamet has called “the street poet of New York.” So, where else could this story be set?

It’s 1952, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Marty Mauser is a salesman in his uncle’s shoe store, escaping to the storeroom for a hot tryst with his (married) girlfriend. This witty opening sequence won’t be the only thing recalling “Uncut Gems,” co-directed by Safdie with his brother Benny before the two split for solo projects. That film, which feels much like the precursor to “Marty Supreme,” began as a trip through the shiny innards of a rare opal, only to wind up inside Adam Sandler’s colon, mid-colonoscopy.

Sandler’s Howard Ratner was a New York striver, too, but sadder, and more troubled. Marty is young, determined, brash — with an eye always to the future. He’s a great salesman: “I could sell shoes to an amputee,” he boasts, crassly. But what he’s plotting to unveil to the world has nothing to do with shoes. It’s about table tennis.

How likely is it that this Jewish kid from the Lower East Side can become the very face of a sport in America, soon to be “staring at you from the cover of a Wheaties box?”

To Marty, perfectly likely. Still, he knows nobody in the US cares about table tennis. He’s so determined to prove everyone wrong, starting at the British Open in London, that when there’s a snag obtaining cash for his trip, he brandishes a gun at a colleague to get it.

Shaking off that sorta-armed robbery thing, Marty arrives in London, where he fast-talks his way into a suite at the Ritz. Here, he spies fellow guest Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow, in a wise, stylish return to the screen), a former movie star married to an insufferable tycoon (“Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary, one of many nonactors here.)

Kay’s skeptical, but Marty finds a way to woo her. Really, all he has to say is: “Come watch me.” Once she sees him play, she’s sneaking into his room in a lace corselet.

This would be a good time to stop and consider Chalamet’s subtly transformed appearance. He is stick-thin — duh, he never stops moving. His mustache is skimpy. His skin is acne-scarred — just enough to erase any movie-star sheen. Most strikingly, his eyes, behind the round spectacles, are beady — and smaller. Definitely not those movie-star eyes.

But then, nearly all the faces in “Marty Supreme” are extraordinary. In a movie with more than 100 characters, we have known actors (Fran Drescher, Abel Ferrara); nonacting personalities (O’Leary, and an excellent Tyler Okonma (Tyler, The Creator) as Marty’s friend Wally); and exciting newcomers like Odessa A’Zion as Marty’s feisty girlfriend Rachel.

There are also a slew of nonactors in small parts, plus cameos from the likes of David Mamet and even high wire artist Philippe Petit. The dizzying array makes one curious how it all came together — is casting director Jennifer Venditti taking interns? Production notes tell us that for one hustling scene at a bowling alley, young men were recruited from a sports trading-card convention.

Elsewhere on the creative team, composer Daniel Lopatin succeeds in channeling both Marty’s beating heart and the ricochet of pingpong balls in his propulsive score. The script by Safdie and cowriter Ronald Bronstein, loosely based on real-life table tennis hustler Marty Reisman, beats with its own, never-stopping pulse. The same breakneck aesthetic applies to camera work by Darius Khondji.

Back now to London, where Marty makes the finals against Japanese player Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi, like his character a deaf table tennis champion). “I’ll be dropping a third atom bomb on them,” he brags — not his only questionable World War II quip. But Endo, with his unorthodox paddle and grip, prevails.

After a stint as a side act with the Harlem Globetrotters, including pingpong games with a seal — you’ll have to take our word for this, folks, we’re running low on space — Marty returns home, determined to make the imminent world championships in Tokyo.

But he's in trouble — remember he took cash at gunpoint? Worse, he has no money.

So Marty’s on the run. And he’ll do anything, however messy or dangerous, to get to Japan. Even if he has to totally debase himself (mark our words), or endanger friends — or abandon loyal and brave Rachel.

Is there something else for Marty, besides his obsessive goal? If so, he doesn’t know it yet. But the lyrics of another song used in the film are instructive here: “Everybody’s got to learn sometime.”

So can a single-minded striver ultimately learn something new about his own life?

We'll have to see. As Marty might say: “Come watch me.”

Entertainment

Nicki Minaj Surprises Conservatives with Praise for Trump, Vance at Arizona Event

CEO and Chair of the Board of Turning Point USA Erika Kirk (L) listens to US rapper Nicki Minaj speak during Turning Point's annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Arizona on December 21, 2025. (Photo by Olivier Touron / AFP)
CEO and Chair of the Board of Turning Point USA Erika Kirk (L) listens to US rapper Nicki Minaj speak during Turning Point's annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Arizona on December 21, 2025. (Photo by Olivier Touron / AFP)
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Nicki Minaj Surprises Conservatives with Praise for Trump, Vance at Arizona Event

CEO and Chair of the Board of Turning Point USA Erika Kirk (L) listens to US rapper Nicki Minaj speak during Turning Point's annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Arizona on December 21, 2025. (Photo by Olivier Touron / AFP)
CEO and Chair of the Board of Turning Point USA Erika Kirk (L) listens to US rapper Nicki Minaj speak during Turning Point's annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Arizona on December 21, 2025. (Photo by Olivier Touron / AFP)

Rapper Nicki Minaj on Sunday made a surprise appearance at a gathering of conservatives in Arizona that was memorializing late activist Charlie Kirk, and used her time on stage to praise President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, calling them “role models” for young men.

The rap star was interviewed at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest convention by Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, about her newly found support for Trump — someone she had condemned in the past — and about her actions denouncing violence against Christians in Nigeria.

The Grammy-nominated rapper's recent alignment with the Make America Great Again movement has caught some interest because of her past criticism of Trump even when the artist's own political ideology had been difficult to pin down. But her appearance Sunday at the flagship event for the powerful conservative youth organization may shore up her status as a MAGA acolyte.

Minaj mocked California Gov. Gavin Newsom, referring to him as New-scum, a nickname Trump gave him. Newsom, a Democrat, has 2028 prospects. Minaj expressed admiration for the Republican president and Vance, who received an endorsement from Erika Kirk despite the fact he has not said whether he will run for president. Kirk took over as leader of Turning Point.

“This administration is full of people with heart and soul, and they make me proud of them. Our vice president, he makes me ... well, I love both of them,” The Associated Press quoted Minaj as saying. “Both of them have a very uncanny ability to be someone that you relate to.”

Minaj’s appearance included an awkward moment when, in an attempt to praise Vance’s political skills, she described him as an “assassin.”

She paused, seemingly regretting her word choice, and after Kirk appeared to wipe a tear from one of her eyes, the artist put her hand over her mouth while the crowd murmured.

“If the internet wants to clip it, who cares? I love this woman,” said Erika Kirk, who became a widow when Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September.

Last month, the rapper shared a message posted by Trump on his Truth Social network about potential actions to sanction Nigeria saying the government is failing to rein in the persecution of Christians in the West African country. Experts and residents say the violence that has long plagued Nigeria isn’t so simply explained.

“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God,” Minaj shared on X. She was then invited to speak at a panel at the US mission to the United Nations along with US Ambassador Mike Waltz and faith leaders.

Minaj said she was tired of being “pushed around,” and she said that speaking your mind with different ideas is controversial because “people are no longer using their minds.” Kirk thanked Minaj for being “courageous,” despite the backlash she is receiving from the entertainment industry for expressing support for Trump.

“I didn’t notice,” Minaj said. “We don’t even think about them.” Kirk then said “we don’t have time to. We’re too busy building, right?”

“We’re the cool kids,” Minaj said.

The Trinidadian-born rapper is best known for her hits “Super Freaky Girl,” “Anaconda” and “Starships.” She has been nominated for 12 Grammy Awards over the course of her career.

In 2018, Minaj was one of several celebrities condemning Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy that split more than 5,000 children from their families at the Mexico border. Back then, she shared her own story of arriving to the country at 5 years old, describing herself as an “illegal immigrant.”

“This is so scary to me. Please stop this. Can you try to imagine the terror & panic these kids feel right now?” she posted then on Instagram.

On Sunday on stage with Erika Kirk, Minaj said, “it’s OK to change your mind.”