Barbra Streisand is releasing her memoir later this year.

The legendary 80-year-old singer will publish ‘My Name Is Barbra’ – which was first announced in 2015 and set to be released two years later – on November 7 as she looks to share his life story “in her own words”.

A press release from publisher Viking teases: “Barbra Streisand is a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment, and this engrossing and delightful book will be eagerly welcomed by her millions of fans.

“Dozens of books have been written about Streisand, and now in ‘My Name Is Barbra’, she tells her story in her own words.”

The book shares its name with the music icon’s 1965 album and a TV special, and it will cover her early years in Brooklyn and New York City as well as her singing career and projects such as ‘The Prince of Tides’.

The star will also address her 24-year marriage to James Brolin, friendships with the lieks of Marlon Brando and her political advocacy.

The synopsis adds: “The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming.”

Barbara previously revealed she started a draft of the book in 1999 but only “really started writing” nine years later, until the COVID-19 pandemic gave her more time to “finish” the project.

The news has gone done well with fans and fellow stars including Lea Michele, who had some fun with the conspiracy theory that she can’t read.

She posted a TikTok video following Barbra’s announced and joked that she has “265 days to learn to read” before the book comes out.

Referencing the rumours more directly last year, Lea said: “I went to ‘Glee’ every single day; I knew my lines every single day. And then there’s a rumor online that I can’t read or write?

“It’s sad. It really is. I think often if I were a man, a lot of this wouldn’t be the case.”

Google’s parent company lost more than $100 billion in its market value after chatbot Bard got an answer wrong.

The tech giant’s new AI machine has been released to a team of specialist testers and is yet to be rolled out to the public, but investors wiped a fortune off the value of the search engine’s parent firm Alphabet after experts pointed out Bard’s error while answering a question about space photography.

Promotional material for Bard – Google’s competitor to Microsoft-backed ChatGPT – contained a mistake in the response by the chatbot to the query: “What new discoveries from the James Webb space telescope (JWST) can I tell my nine-year old about?”

Bard’s response, contained in a video demo posted online, included an answer suggesting the JWST was used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system, or exoplanets.

The first picture was actually taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in 2004, according to NASA.

On Wednesday (08.02.23), Alphabet stock opened lower at $102.05 per share against the previous closing price of $107.64 on the NASDAQ.

During the day’s trading session, the tech stock declined as much as 8.9% to hit a low of $98.04, before the share settled 7.68% lower at $99.37 – erasing more than $100 billion in market capitalisation.

The Bard error was picked up by experts including Grant Tremblay, an astrophysicist at the US Center for Astrophysics.

He tweeted about the mistake: “Not to be a – well, actually – jerk, and I’m sure Bard will be impressive, but for the record: JWST did not take ‘the very first image of a planet outside our solar system’.”

Bruce Macintosh, director of University of California Observatories, also tweeted: “Speaking as someone who imaged an exoplanet 14 years before JWST was launched, it feels like you should find a better example?”

Bard is based on a “large language” artificial intelligence model, which is meant to mimic the underlying architecture of the brain in computer form.

It is fed huge amounts of text from the web to teach it how to respond to text-based prompts, but the input can lead to the bot repeating errors from the information it absorbed.

Google said the error, first reported by Reuters, underlined the need for testing new systems, with a spokesperson for the company adding: “This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our trusted tester program.

“We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”

Gil Luria, senior software analyst at D.A. Davidson, said “while Google has been a leader in AI innovation” over the last several years, they “seemed to have fallen asleep on implementing this technology into their search product”.

Los Angeles (AFP) – Legendary American pop composer, songwriter and pianist Burt Bacharach, whose prolific output provided a chart-topping playlist for the 1960s and 1970s with hits like “I Say a Little Prayer,” has died in Los Angeles at the age of 94.

Bacharach worked with a constellation of stars during his decades-long career, from Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin, to Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones, to Elvis Costello and the White Stripes. 

Bacharach  — who died on Wednesday of natural causes, his publicist Tina Brausman told AFP — was known for romantic and melancholic ballads that blurred the line between jazz and pop, and regularly topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

He earned a flurry of accolades including three Oscars including for the score of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” eight Grammy awards including a lifetime achievement prize, two Golden Globes and induction in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The list of hits is long: “Walk On By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” are only a few of the best known. He penned nearly 50 Top 100 hits and nine songs that went to number one on the charts.

Bacharach enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration with Dionne Warwick, including on the 1985 power collaboration “That’s What Friends Are For,” a cover of a song first co-written in 1982 with Carole Bayer Sager, who was one of his four wives along with actress Angie Dickinson.

“Keep smilin’, keep shinin’ // Knowing you can always count on me for sure // That’s what friends are for,” said the lyrics, which brought Warwick together with Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight for a fundraiser to combat the AIDS epidemic.

Arranger, singer, writer

A pianist passionate about jazz, Bacharach was born on May 12, 1928 in Kansas City, Missouri, and studied the art of composition in several American universities.

After his military service, he was hired by Marlene Dietrich as an arranger and musical director for her tours.

In 1957, he met lyricist Hal David, who died in 2012, with whom he would form one of the most successful partnerships in the music industry.

Four years later, they would discover during a recording session a young chorus girl who would become their standard bearer: Warwick. 

Between 1962 and 1968, they wrote 15 titles that rose into the American Top 40.

The songwriting duo won two Oscars for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”: best original score, and best original song for “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.”

In 1973, a financial dispute broke out between the two men. For 10 years, they spoke only through lawyers and never worked together again.

Thereafter, he traveled around the world performing with elite orchestras, though the coronavirus pandemic curtailed his touring schedule.

In 2012, then president Barack Obama awarded him with the prestigious Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. 

Demonstrating his longevity and cross-generational fan base, Bacharach sang at the Glastonbury festival in Britain in 2015 at age 87, serenading the crowd with an hour-long set of hits.

The crowd bathed “in the romantic, rose-tinted glow of the easy-listening king,” reported the Guardian, adding that Adele was among those watching in admiration.

Bacharach is survived by his fourth wife Jane and three children. A fourth child, Nikki, predeceased him.

“RIP Maestro. It was a pleasure to have known you,” Oasis singer Noel Gallagher wrote on Instagram.

Houston (AFP) – A young white nationalist who in 2019 shot and killed 23 people at a Texas supermarket in the majority-Hispanic city of El Paso pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court, news reports said.

During a hearing in the same city on the US-Mexico border, Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty to 90 counts against him including committing a hate crime resulting in death, local networks ABC7 and KFOX14 reported.

His lawyers reversed course in January and decided to have him plead guilty to the shooting at a Walmart store after federal prosecutors dropped the death penalty as a possible sentence.

But he still faces trial at the state level in Texas, which has not ruled out requesting capital punishment.

On August 3, 2019, Crusius drove some 660 miles (1,060 kilometers) from Allen, Texas near Dallas to the Walmart Supercenter in El Paso with an assault rifle and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

He opened fire on people in the supermarket parking lot, killing 23 and wounding 22.

According to the federal indictment, before Crusius launched his attack he uploaded a document to the internet titled “The Inconvenient Truth” in which he said his attack “is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” 

He said he was “defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement,” referring to a concept by white supremacists claiming other ethnic groups are “replacing” them in the population.

When police showed up he got out of his car and identified himself as the shooter. While in custody Crusius told police he had wanted to kill “Mexicans.”

The massacre ignited a debate on how then-president Donald Trump’s repeated criticism of immigrants guided the behavior of people who supported him.

Crusius’s attack was the fifth deadliest mass shooting in US history.

It came two years after a gunman killed 58 at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas and three years after a man murdered 49 at an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Christina Aguilera, Bad Bunny and Jeremy Pope will be honoured at the GLAAD Media Awards.

The trio will be recognised for their contribution to the LGBTQ community at the ceremony that will be held on March 30 at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.

Christina will receive GLAAD’s Advocate for Change Award. The gong is given “to a person who, through their work, has changed the game for LGBTQ people around the world”.

The Grammy-winning star dedicated her hit song ‘Beautiful’ to the queer community and launched her own Pride collection in 2001. She has also helped raise over $500 million toward HIV research with MAC cosmetics.

GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said: “Christina Aguilera is a beloved icon who has inspired and shared messages of love for the LGBTQ community since the start of her music career.

“From using her voice to speak out against anti-LGBTQ legislation to creating songs and music videos that showcase LGBTQ love, Christina loudly and proudly raises the bar for what it means to be an LGBTQ ally today.”

Bad Bunny will receive GLAAD’s Vanguard award for his allyship to the LGBTQ community for using his platform to uplift underexposed voices.

The reggaeton artist joins a star-studded group of previous honourees including Beyonce, Jay-Z and Britney Spears.

Ellis said: “Bad Bunny uses his role as one of the world’s most popular music artists to boldly shine a light on LGBTQ people and issues, including transgender equality and ending violence against trans women of colour.

“By consistently advocating for our community, elevating our stories and demanding action from anti-LGBTQ leaders, Bad Bunny redefines the positive influence Latin music artists can have within the LGBTQ community, and has set an example for all artists.”

Jeremy will receive the Stephen F. Kolzak award, presented to an LGBTQ media professional who has increased queer visibility and acceptance through their work.

Pope has made groundbreaking queer appearances in the film ‘The Inspection’ and the TV series ‘Pose’.

After an interlude of 12 years, Bret Easton Ellis is back with “The Shards,” a 736-page tome set in a posh prep school.

Hedonistic, dark and wild, this tragic-comic tale set in 1980s Los Angeles thrusts us into a clique of wealthy, troubled youngsters.

The work comes on the heels of “Imperial Bedrooms” published in 2010. In his latest novel, the author, or part of him, is both the narrator and main character, leading many to wonder where fact ends and fiction begins, given the novel’s main character is a teenager named Bret.

No matter, says the author. He is not worried about conveying the truth, he has told various media outlets in interviews.

The main character and his friends all attend Buckley, an expensive private school, and almost all of them are highly privileged. They spend their time getting high on marijuana and cocaine, their lives unfolding to a soundtrack of Blondie, The Babys and Duran Duran.

While Ellis the author is gay, his protagonist Bret is bisexual and cheats on his girlfriend Debbie, fantasizing about men and having sexual encounters with them.

When he was at school, Ellis recalls having a girlfriend who he called “one of the most popular girls in our senior class.” But, he says, “I was gay, and only pretending to be a boyfriend,” he told Britain’s Unherd website.

His latest work features several passages about Bret’s sexual appetites and his pleasure in experimentation.

Alongside Bret and Debbie, we also read about a popular quarterback Thom and Susan who is beautiful and numb, a perhaps more typical high-school couple within the circle of friends.

The work is initially light-hearted, as easy-going as the California summer Bret describes.

But although his senior year was meant to be a dream, in the end it is anything but, as events take an ever darker turn.

This is 1981, as the enigmatic Robert Mallory joins their group. Girls are all drawn to him but he is surrounded by mystery, with people wondering why he has come to the school just for his senior year.

Right from their first encounter, Bret suspects he is a liar and decides to get to the bottom of what drives this newcomer.

Unlike other campus novels with their relationship tiffs and squabbles, Ellis gives the reader a disturbing narrative, showing us the flipside of the seemingly perfect lives of these wealthy young people.

They are battling with a Los Angeles that is both dazzling and threatening, peopled by strange and corrupt adults with all their vanities and intrusions.

Take the father of one of the teens, a well-connected, self-righteous Hollywood producer who hides his sexual appetites for underage students.

Then there’s the “Trawler,” a serial killer who terrorises the city.

Ellis is a skilful storyteller, keeping the tension high with one cliffhanger after the next.

But that is easy, as the narrator is the ageing Bret, an omniscient observer who knows how the story ends.

Even seemingly inconsequential situations come to life with gripping dialogue and unexpected twists, with a rich tapestry of detail throughout the work.

But this too is a weakness as some of it is virtually unreadable, from the graphic descriptions of crime scenes to the protagonist’s explicit fantasies. No, this book is not for the squeamish.

And yet we already know that this author is not worried about the sensitivities of his audience, having faced a barrage of criticism for some of the graphic scenes in his earlier work, “American Psycho.”

He does not set out to offend people, he has said, telling Unherd that he is not thinking about the reader when creating a book. “I don’t really write for an audience.”

Like every book he has written, “it starts with a feeling,” he says.

He is trying to work something out. “I often write a novel because I’m stuck at a certain point in my life,” he told Variety. “I’m confused, I’m scared, I’m having anxiety and I can’t quite figure out how to move forward. I’m kind of trapped someplace, and the writing flows from that.”

That has resulted in a turbo ride of a read that is suffused with dread. A horror-packed journey through glitzy, ’80s LA, it is certainly not for the faint hearted.