Lifestyle

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA — This was his life now. Paul J. Manafort Jr. took his seat in Room 900 of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, just before 9 a.m. Tuesday. The disgraced political influence-peddler and former chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign wore a dark suit and said little. He looked older. Grayer. He appeared to have aged considerably from even a mere two years ago, the summer his life began to implode. Manafort’s team of lawyers — all men, all white — joined him at the defense’s table. A few feet away sat four Justice Department lawyers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, readying themselves. Last year, Mueller indicted Manafort and a former colleague on 32 counts related to bank fraud and tax evasion. (Manafort has pleaded not guilty.) The indictment shook Washington — one of its biggest operatives over the past several decades had fallen. The two legal teams spread their ringed binders … [Read more...] about The Heat Is On: A Dispatch From Day 1 of the Paul Manafort Trial

TMZ has obtained a letter Warner Bros. sent to Charlie Sheen's lawyer, stating Charlie was being terminated because he committed a felony involving "moral turpitude." Launch Doc In the 11-page letter, obtained from sources connected to Charlie, Warner Bros. states, "Your client has been engaged in dangerously self-destructive conduct and appears to be very ill." The letter then goes on to describe Charlie's hijinks, including trashing the Plaza Hotel in NYC, coke binges, on-set failures because of drug fatigue, and diatribes against "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre. The letter also notes that Charlie derailed production when he went into rehab, and then he fired his sobriety coach. In fact, Warner Bros. claims it was so concerned about Charlie's well-being, "Warner Bros. had an airplane waiting" to take him to a treatment facility ... but Charlie would have none of it. As for why Charlie got fired, the letter says there is a clause in his contract saying they can … [Read more...] about Charlie Sheen — Read Warner Bros. Letter to Charlie Sheen

EXCLUSIVE R. Kelly thinks his ex-wife has a lot of audacity telling him to get a job at Del Taco so he can pay child support, because he thinks she should get behind the counter at a burger joint to pay her own way. The singer's crisis manager, Darrell Johnson, tells TMZ ... the "TMZ Live" interview with Drea and their daughter, Buku Abi, underscores the ridiculousness of him paying child support to an adult. Buku's 21 and said she's got her own career and doesn't need R. Kelly's money, but it's still his responsibility to pay until she's 23. Play video content TMZ.com The singer believes Drea's using child support to fund her own lifestyle, and says it's time for her to get a job ... and he suggests McDonald's and Burger King are viable options, adding she too has a responsibility to pay for their kids. Kelly is on the hook for about $21k a month in child support, and he's currently behind $32k. Kelly's lawyer, Steven Greenberg, also tells us his client is sick of … [Read more...] about R. Kelly Counters Ex’s ‘Del Taco’ Jab, Says She Can Go Work at Burger King

In 2017, director Chris Smith was wrapping up Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond, his documentary on Jim Carrey’s transformation into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon, when he added a simple line to “a bunch of half-baked ideas” he had written down: Fyre Festival. Organizers of the inaugural luxurious music festival, set to take place over two weekends in the Bahamas in 2017, promised attendees exquisite villas, hangs with supermodels and a lineup featuring Blink-182, Major Lazer, G.O.O.D. Music and Disclosure, among many high-profile acts. There was only one problem: It was all a fraud and a byproduct of too much marketing and too little actual planning. When guests, some of whom paid tens of thousands of dollars for the “once-in-a-lifetime” experience, arrived, the “villas” were mostly FEMA disaster tents; the supermodels were either sequestered or not there at all; and the artists either hadn’t been booked or had backed out of the … [Read more...] about Fyre Festival Doc Director Talks Fest’s Epic Failure, Employee PTSD

Visitors keep Venice afloat, but locals say they are slowly killing the city's distinctive culture. Venice is locked in a love-hate relationship with its tourists. The hordes of foreign visitors that flood into the picturesque Italian port city — an estimated 30 million each and every year — are the lifeblood of the Venetian economy, financing everything from hotels, restaurants and bars to the city's craft and souvenir shops and its iconic gondoliers.  But the combination of low-cost flights, Airbnbs and flotillas of giant cruise ships, is “killing Venice,” according to Marco Gasparinetti, 55, a spokesman for Gruppo 25 Aprile, an advocacy group representing 2,000 citizens of the city. He notes that tourists outnumber residents in Venice 140 to 1, with peak days seeing cruise ships dropping upward of 44,000 onto the city's narrow, cobbled streets. “When I was a child we could play football in the streets. The air quality was amazing,” says … [Read more...] about How the Battle Over Tourism Is Dividing Venice