US country star cancels Belfast gig and rest of European tour: ‘It wasn't an easy decision'
©UK Independent
US country star Hardy has cancelled his gig at the Ulster Hall which was set to take place in just over two weeks' time.
The Philadelphia-born singer-songwriter also scrapped the rest of the European leg of his Jim Bob Tour just days before it was scheduled to begin in Copenhagen, Denmark on Thursday.
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Daily Mail
37 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Hollywood star divides fans as he poses with Joe Biden and controversial son Hunter after slamming Trump
Alan Ritchson - star of the hit series Reacher - gushed about a surprise visit on set from former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. The actor, who has over 4.2 million followers on Instagram, shared a reel consisting of photos and clips from the presidential visit. Alan gushed about the Biden in his caption, writing: 'So our Reacher set got in the way of these legends.' The actor, who is a devout Christian, slammed current President Donald Trump last year during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Alan, 42, called Trump a 'rapist and con man,' and took a swipe at Christians who support him. Alan Ritchson - star of the hit series Reacher - gushed about a surprise visit on set from former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden In Alan's post, he explained how honored he felt meeting Joe and Hunter. He wrote: 'Was a privilege and honor to meet the Biden family. They couldn't have been more lovely. Kind, joyful, gracious and present.' Adding: 'We chatted briefly about simple stuff, like string theory and quantum entanglement. Then Joe beat me at arm wrestling. All in a day's work.' The Bidens dined at Parc restaurant in Philadelphia while Reacher was filming nearby, according to CBS Philadelphia. Alan was filming a scene outside that involved a police chase when Joe and Hunter got out of a SUV. 'Out walked these men that I thought were actors but then the entire cast and crew started clapping and cheering. Then someone said, "We love you, Joe, we love you!"' the eyewitness told CBS Philadelphia. 'I thought it was the end of the scene - that they were wrapping for the day. And no, it was you know Joe Biden decided he needed some breakfast at Parc Rittenhouse,' the source told the outlet. The source said they were inside the restaurant for about an hour then came and met with the actors and crew members as well as residents. In April 2024, Alan spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about his religion and how the religion has changed in his opinion. 'I'm a Christian quite simply because of what Jesus calls us to do. Love other people until death. It doesn't mean we're all to be hung on a cross, but how can I suffer for you? That is a beautiful thing,' he said to the outlet. He called Christians the 'most vitriolic tribe' and noted that 'it is so antithetical to what Jesus was calling us to be and to do.' His show Reacher has been dubbed an anti-woke series - but the actor has very strong feelings about Trump. Alan plays Jack Reacher in the series, which is based on the Jack Reacher book series by Lee Child. 'Trump is a rapist and a con man. And yet the entire Christian church seems to treat him like he's their poster child and it's unreal. I don't understand it,' Alan said. On the state of the Catholic church: 'It's worth saying that the atrocities that are happening in the church that are being actively covered up, even to this day with people not being held accountable, is repulsive. I can't for one second support the Catholic Church while there are still cardinals, bishops and priests being passed around with known pedophilic tendencies.' Alan stars in action series Reacher, based on the Jack Reacher book series Fans were divided in the comments section of Alan's reel, with some surprised at his political stance Fans were divided in the comments section of Alan's reel, with some surprised at his political stance. Others simply found joy in how it was make pro-Trump fans react, while many just thought it was an amazing experience to meet a president. Many applauded him on being a 'true Christian,' and calling the moment as 'awesome.' In February 2025, Alan revealed he and Matt Gaetz were 'adversaries,' and said it began back in their school days. He spoke out his relationship with the former Congressman to GQ magazine, calling him 'that motherf****r.' 'We are adversaries. He's just not a good dude. It's shocking to me that the panhandle of Florida continues to vote for somebody - knowing everything we know about him.' Gaetz was a member of Congress and was Trump's choice for Attorney General, but he pulled his own name out of contention after allegations he had a threesome with a minor. He has maintained his innocence.
Telegraph
44 minutes ago
- Telegraph
‘She had no clue about art': How Dasha Zhukova went from oligarch's wife to saviour of culture
She's been a Russian immigrant to the US, the wife of an oligarch and the wife of a shipping magnate, an It Girl, a magazine editor and a patron of the arts. But Dasha Zhukova's new role is rather surprising: building affordable housing. The former wife of Roman Abramovich has set up a company called Ray, an ambitious live-work venture which aims to combine art exhibition space, artists' studios and affordable living space. The first projects recently opened in Philadelphia and Harlem, with a new home for the National Black Theatre. And there are further developments in the pipeline for Phoenix and Nashville. Presumably the Moscow-born, Los Angeles-raised 44-year-old was looking for something to keep herself busy after the closure of her Moscow-based gallery Garage in 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Two days after Putin's forces marched into Ukraine, Zhukova paused all exhibits, to protest what she described on Instagram as 'the brutal and horrific invasion'. But while she's emphatically condemned Russia's actions, she's been remarkably tight-lipped about her ex-husband's links to Putin. And since she separated from the former owner of Chelsea FC in 2016, Dasha has appeared to distance herself from him. She now has three children with her second husband Stavros Niarchos, a Greek shipping magnate whose late father had a fortune of £12 billion. Well, she certainly has a type. 'The idea that she has nothing to do with Roman any more is far-fetched,' says Elisabeth Schimpfössl, an associate professor of sociology and policy at Aston University, and author of the book Rich Russians: From Oligarchs to Bourgeoisie. 'They have two children together, she received nearly $100 million in New York real estate from him in the divorce settlement. But she's rearranged her assets and remarried.' When she first arrived on the scene, Zhukova seemed to fit the cliché of the billionaire's wife merely dabbling in art and philanthropy as a hobby. But she has been able to turn herself into a respected force in the art world. 'At the beginning she had no clue about art,' says an art world insider who met with Dasha in her early days of collecting. 'She had a very scattergun approach and didn't know what she was doing, she seemed a bit clueless. But once she got into international contemporary art she'd clearly found her passion and was very driven.' During their time together Abramovich amassed one of the world's biggest private art collections, worth an estimated $963 million, including Lucian Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, Paula Rego's The Policeman's Daughter and David Hockney 's Beverly Hills Housewife. 'That was all Dasha's doing,' says Mark Hollingsworth, author of Londongrad: from Russia with Cash. 'Abramovich had zero interest in art. They were known for throwing parties in London, New York and St. Barth's, the Caribbean island where Abramovich owns a sprawling mansion and docked his $700 million yacht, Eclipse, at the harbour. He spent most of his time jet skiing. Dasha wasn't your typical socialite, she was very serious, not flakey. She had a lot of celebrity friends and was quite understated considering her position and wealth. She's glamorous, but not by Russian standards. She's not bling.' View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dasha Zhukova Niarchos (@dasha) Zhukova counts Oprah Winfrey, Gwyneth Paltrow and the model Karlie Kloss among her close friends. Guests at her and Abramovich's legendary New Year's Eve parties (which reportedly cost £5 million a pop) included Beyoncé, Demi Moore, Orlando Bloom and Kanye West. 'There's something of the diligent school girl about her,' says a New York socialite who attended one of Dasha's parties. 'She speaks perfect English with a hint of a Russian intonation and a Californian lilt. She's very beautiful and interested in people and sociable. Roman was always different – quiet and in the background, no one was surprised when they split up.' 'When I first met her, I thought she was very curious, very quick, and she doesn't forget things,' says Klaus Biesenbach, formerly curator-at-large of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 'It's a good combination: If you ask, you learn, and if you remember, you can make something out of it.' Daria 'Dasha' Zhukova was born in Moscow in 1981, the only child of molecular biologist Elena and Alexander Zhukov, a businessman who began selling personal computers in Russia in the 1980s before making his fortune in oil in Ukraine. In 2001, he spent several months under arrest on suspicion of being engaged in arms smuggling from Ukraine to the states of former Yugoslavia. Her parents divorced when Dasha was three years old and in 1991, she moved with her mother to Houston, USA. 'When the Soviet Union collapsed, my mother found it very difficult to be in this quite aggressive environment and she couldn't really handle the abrupt changes,' Zhukova said in a rare interview. 'So we didn't actually emigrate to America, we thought we were just going for a year or two and then, I guess, she decided to stay. You know, I can't imagine what it takes to get up in your 30s, with a child, and say, 'OK, now I'm leaving and going somewhere I don't know.'' After their time in Houston, Elena was offered a teaching position at UCLA and enrolled her daughter in Pacific Hills, a small, sporty private school in West Hollywood whose alumni include the actor Jason Bateman and Monica Lewinsky. Although she tried her hand at modelling, a teenage Dasha preferred volleyball. After high school, she enrolled at UC Santa Barbara, where she took up Slavic studies and literature. It was this time in the US which allowed the Russian heiress to later seamlessly slip into American high society. As her friend, the writer Derek Blasberg, put it: 'How many 'oligarch's wives' worked at Mrs. Fields Cookies in the mall?' He has also called her 'incredibly hands-on' with her business projects. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dasha Zhukova Niarchos (@dasha) 'Because Dasha was from a wealthy background and had grown up in America she immediately set herself apart from other oligarch's wives,' says Elisabeth Schimpfössl. 'She is a quick learner and she knows all the right people. The word I've heard used about her is 'enchanting' – she puts a spell on people.' At 22, she moved to London to study homeopathic medicine but became obsessed with contemporary art instead, never finishing her course. 'If something captures my attention, I am completely absorbed,' she has said. 'I am very determined; I tunnel-vision straight to where I need to go. I guess that's the thing I really know how to do.' She lived in one of her father's luxurious apartments in Knightsbridge and dated Marat Safin, a Russian tennis player. In 2005, Dasha met Abramovich at a dinner in Moscow – a friend of her father's from his oil-trading days. The couple had very different upbringings – Abramovich was born into a poor Jewish family and orphaned at the age of four. Yet when Zhukova met him in 2005, his wealth was estimated at $10 billion, after he bought an oil company from the Russian government in an allegedly rigged auction in 1995. Abramovich's lawyers denied that there was any criminality involved. But Dasha wasn't going to be content with a life of spas, parties and shopping. She launched a fashion label, Kova & T, and briefly edited the style and music magazine called Pop. With art dealer Larry Gagosian as her mentor (the couple bought a property across the road from him in New York) she became a powerful player in the modern art world. In 2008, she and Abramovich set up the Garage Contemporary Art Museum. For the 2008 opening, Zhukova, then 27, installed Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Spiral – an enormous light sculpture that blinks in sync with the heartbeat of each viewer – in an abandoned 1920s bus depot and hired Amy Winehouse as post-dinner entertainment. She founded Garage Magazine, a glossy fashion and art journal, which she sold to Vice Media in 2016. The first issue, in 2011, had a model sporting a Damien Hirst butterfly tattoo on her vulva, and was banned by WH Smith. She was appointed to the boards of the Metropolitan Museum, the Shed and the Los Angeles County Museum and uses her connections to throw lavish parties for the institutions she's involved with. For LACMA's 30th-anniversary gala, she helped bring the Bolshoi Ballet from Moscow to Los Angeles to dance for Lady Gaga as she played on a Damien Hirst-designed piano while wearing a custom-made Prada chandelier dress. After Dasha's split from Abramovich – which her spokesperson describes as amicable – she married Stavros Niarchos in a celebrity-packed 2020 wedding in St. Moritz. Guests included Princess Beatrice and art dealer Vito Schnabel. They have three children together and Dasha regularly posts pictures of the family on Instagram – posing at luxury hotels, art exhibitions and attending this year's Met Gala. In 2024, her mother, Elena, married the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. With Dasha's real-estate venture, Ray, she says she is aiming to bring art to everyday life. At least for those who can afford it. At Ray Harlem, which Zhukova says reached its first month's target for new tenants in the first two weeks, the apartments range from $2,700 per month for a studio to $4,800 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, which would be out of the price range of most New York artists. But presumably like everything else she tries, Dasha will make it more than a vanity project and achieve commercial success. 'I don't know what drives me,' she told an interviewer in 2012. 'But I wake up in the morning and I want to participate in the creative cultural conversation.'
The Sun
3 hours ago
- The Sun
Chelsea files: ‘Kevin de Bruyne 2.0' fears about new signing as £44m Geovany Quenda shines at Euro U21 Championship
COLE PALMER is a man of few words but underneath his withdrawn demeanour lies a cheeky sense of humour. Football fans were surprised to see Chelsea's most gifted player arrive in the US for the Club World Cup sporting a face mask. 5 One of those disposable, blue mouth and nose covers that so many of us remember from the height of the Covid pandemic. Of course, pictures of the England star covering his face triggered rumours that he was ill, the rest of the team were ill, or that he had extremely bad plane breath. Thankfully for Chelsea fans and head coach Enzo Maresca, it seems all is well with his prized player. The Italian explained: 'To be honest, I saw him in the flight with the mask, but I didn't ask. I think probably because he was not even a little bit ill. To be honest, I don't know if it was even for a joke. He's okay.' For those who witnessed Palmer's mono syllabic responses live on TV at the height of celebrations following the Conference League win last month, it's refreshing and reassuring to learn that beneath his stone cold outward persona lies a wicked sense of humour. Chelsea's media officials might not agree so wholeheartedly though as the photo of Palmer standing aside from his team-mates as they 'de-planed' in Philadelphia last week, caused them a busy day answering umpteen phone calls as to why? ******************************************************* For starters, mention "football" and they think you are referring to large men in padded shirts lobbing a rugby shaped ball around. So "soccer" it is. Additionally, there is no such thing as "Man of the Match" as Chelsea winger Estevao Willian found out. The teenager is poised to join the Blues from Palmeiras later this summer but for now is representing the Brazilian giants at the Club World Cup. Despite missing a good opportunity to score in the 0-0 draw with Porto, he was considered the best on the pitch. Even though Porto keeper Claudio Ramos made a stunning triple save during the game. Nonetheless, Estevao got the nod but instead of being named as "Man of the Match" he was elected "Superior Player". Another American-ese term we are going to have to get used to. But the 18-year-old's euphoria didn't last long after his personal achievement. When asked about the performance of his imminent arrival who cost £34million, Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca seemed less than giddy at the prospect. Maresca said; 'I'm not thinking about it. I just answered the question that probably we need to do something in the wide area. Now if Estevao is doing well, we are happy. But in this moment he's doing well for another team. Hopefully he can do well for us when he joins us.' Hardly gushing praise is it? ******************************************************* BLUE is the colour, unless you are part of the Chelsea team in the USA that is. New for the Club World Cup is the "mint" green outfit that looks more like cold pea soup. Everyone is sporting it, no doubt to drive sales over here and back home in the UK. And while on some of the younger members of staff it doesn't look half bad, for people of a certain age it's hardly flattering. Seeing the whole Chelsea entourage rock up at the Mercedes Benz Arena in Atlanta in identical garb was some sight. And it's coming to a Chelsea superstore near you very soon. The colour is officially labelled "Jade Horizon" - yes, I kid you not. All together now : 'Jade Horizon is the colour, football is the game…' Tut tut. When will it stop? 5 WITH all eyes on the Club World Cup for Chelsea at the moment, it's easy to forget that the Under-21 Euros are also ongoing - and the Blues have plenty of talent taking part. Wanted centre-backs Ismael Doukoure and Jorrel Hato are both in action in the tournament, but the man stealing the show has already penned a deal in South West London - Geovany Quenda. After a good showing in Portugal's tournament debut that ended in a draw, the talented winger stole the show in a 5-0 thrashing of Poland in which he scored twice and got an assist before being replaced at half-time. He's the youngest player at the tournament, and his performance has already got fans drawing comparisons between him and Estevao Willian. The 18-year-old can play on the right, left or as a wing-back as he showcased for Sporting Lisbon last season, and was desired by Ruben Amorim's Manchester United before Chelsea stole in and secured the deal. Quenda will join in 12 months time and could cost the Blues up to £44million, which may just turn out to be great value for money if he can work his way into the first team. 5 5 SUCH is the story of Chelsea at the moment that they announced the signing of Ecuadorean midfielder Kendry Paez in 2023 from Independiente Del Valle and he is yet to play a minute for the Blues. The wonderkid has been touted as a future Ballon D'or winner, but fans are concerned about how things may play out for him at Stamford Bridge. Paez' situation at Chelsea has become somewhat complicated as he expected to be playing at the Club World Cup before being left out of the squad, but travelling with the players to train in America. He is expected to go on loan to Strasbourg next season, following in the footsteps of Andrey Santos before being given a chance to shine in the Premier League. The worry is, that with Chelsea's abundance of talent, particularly in his position where in future he could be competing with Cole Palmer, Estevao Willian, Geovany Quenda, Noni Madueke and more, that he will be a victim of the Blues' system - or won't see a clear pathway and force a move elsewhere. This may well be Kevin De Bruyne 2.0 if the Chelsea hierarchy are not careful… ********************************************************** A HAT TRICK of former Chelsea academy graduates could well be paying a visit back to Stamford Bridge this summer as part of an international tournament. Fikayo Tomori, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Tammy Abraham all play for Italians AC Milan, who join Germans Bayer Leverkusen and the Blues a week before the Premier League season kicks off. The trio form the spine of a team with defender Tomori, midfielder Loftus-Cheek and striker Abraham all enjoying strong connections with each other and with their former club. 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