NEW YORK: No, Britney Spears is not dead.
Yet her fans’ hearts may have skipped a beat Tuesday when tweets purportedly from Sony Music Entertainment said “RIP @britneyspears #RIPBritney 1981-2016” and “Britney spears is dead by accident! We will tell you more soon #RIPBritney.”
The real Sony Music Entertainment quickly deleted those tweets and issued a terse clarification: “Sony Music Entertainment’s Twitter account was compromised. This has been rectified,” it said. “Sony Music apologizes to Britney Spears and her fans for any confusion.”
Spears’s manager, Adam Leber, told CNN that “Britney is fine and well.”
She had posted photos on Sunday of her children in camouflage gear during an outdoors excursion.
“There have been a few Internet clowns over the years who have made similar claims about her death,” Leber said, “but never from the official Sony Music Twitter account.”
In 2001, a Texas radio station reported that Spears and then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake had died in a car crash. Two on-air personalities were later fired for repeating bogus Internet reports.
In addition to Sony’s Twitter account, the official account of Bob Dylan may have been hacked on Monday: It tweeted: “Rest in peace @britneyspears” about the same time as the fake Sony tweets were going out.
While the origin of the erroneous tweets was not certain, the hacker group OurMine was a prime suspect. One tweet from Dylan’s account included the OurMine hashtag.
The group has hacked the accounts of other celebrities — including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — as well as those of Netflix, Marvel and Variety magazine.
It has then offered to provide its own security services to prevent future attacks.
The latest episode was reminiscent of the massive cyberattack against Sony in November 2014.
Oops! Sony is hacked again ... and Britney is not dead
Oops! Sony is hacked again ... and Britney is not dead
USA Today Co., owner of the Detroit Free Press, says it will purchase The Detroit News
LANSING, Michigan: USA Today Co., which owns the Detroit Free Press, said Monday that it plans to acquire The Detroit News and bring both major metropolitan newspapers under its banner.
The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press recently ended an almost 40-year agreement that allowed the two papers to operate in the same city and merge aspects of their business operations.
According to a statement from USA Today Co., the newspaper publisher formerly named Gannett, both newspapers will continue to publish separately. The company provided little other information on the planned operation of the daily newspapers.
The statement also did not disclose a price of the sale.
USA Today Co., which publishes the largest chain of newspapers in the US, said the sale is being funded through cash and financing managed by Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm that funded New Media Investment Group Inc.’s 2019 acquisition of Gannett.
The deal is expected to close “at the end of the month.”
The two newspapers have both been in operation for over 100 years. The Detroit News has won three Pulitzer Prizes and the Detroit Free Press has won 10.
“Both companies have a mutual desire to ensure that these publications and their distinct journalism continue to serve the greater Detroit area,” Guy Gilmore, chief operating officer of MediaNews Group, the current owner of The Detroit News said in a statement.
In 1989, the two papers began a joint operating agreement, a deal established under the 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act which allowed failing newspapers to be exempt from certain antitrust rules. The two newspapers worked in competition but shared some overhead resources and business operations including advertising, printing and distribution.
The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News ended the agreement in December after 36 years.
In 2024, Gannett stopped using journalism produced by The Associated Press as financial struggles continued to mount on the news industry.
