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Britney Spears enters rehab after arrest on suspicion of DUI

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — Britney Spears voluntarily checked into rehab on Sunday following her March arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence, a representative for Spears confirmed to Reuters on Monday. The California Highway Patrol said the pop singer was arrested in Ventura County after officers stopped her black BMW following a report that it had been traveling erratically at high speed. The highway patrol said in a statement that Spears, the sole occupant of the vehicle, “showed signs of impairment” due to what officers suspected was the influence of a combination of alcohol and drugs. It added she underwent a series of field sobriety tests.

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Spears was booked into the Ventura County Main Jail and is due for a court appearance on May 4. Spears, who became one of the biggest pop stars in the world in the late 1990s while still a teenager, has struggled for years with intense media speculation into her personal life, use of drink and drugs, and questions over her mental state. In 2007, she was charged with one count of a hit-and-run causing property damage and one count of driving without a valid license, both misdemeanors. The first charge was later dropped and the other dismissed.

After she had a public breakdown that year, she was hospitalized for undisclosed mental health issues and her father granted a conservatorship. Spears regained control of her personal life and her money in 2021 when a judge ended the conservatorship that had become a cause celebre for fans and that had governed her personal life and $60 million estate since 2008.

Sid Krofft, 96, creator of trippy kids’ shows dies

(NYT) — Sid Krofft, who with his brother Marty made some of the most bizarre children’s programming ever seen on television, like “H.R. Pufnstuf” and “Land of the Lost,” gaining a following among both the young and adult members of the counterculture with shows that lingered in viewers’ memories like acid flashbacks, died Friday in Los Angeles. He was 96.

His death, at the home of his friend Kelly Killian, was confirmed by a publicist, Adam Fenton.

Krofft was an eccentric visionary, a kids’ show P.T. Barnum who sold children, and network executives, on exceedingly improbable programming with a combination of creativity and chutzpah.

The Krofft brothers were partners, with Marty, the younger one, largely handling the practical side of their enterprise, keeping them solvent and smoothing things over with the executives when Sid went too far.

As a result, the Kroffts had a string of television shows that often did not last long in their initial broadcast runs but remained in circulation for years as reruns.

What tied the shows together was a madcap yet wondrous feel, complete with fantastical creatures, elaborate costumes and puppets, psychedelic sets and slapstick humor — a mélange of the Three Stooges and “Alice in Wonderland.”

The shows could feel hallucinogenic, and many older viewers read drug references into them that the Kroffts maintained were not intentional.

Krofft was born on July 30, 1929, in Montreal, the third of four sons of Peter and Mary (Yolas) Krofft.

Sid Krofft never married — “I’m married to my art,” he told the Times in 2006 — and had no children. Marty Krofft died in 2023; another brother, Harry, died last year.