Tori Amos: the riot grrl fighting for the fairer sex

Tori Amos confronts personal issues such as ageism in her new album (Picture: supplied)

‘I come from a long line of warriors,’ says Tori Amos. ‘My great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee who survived the Trail Of Tears in 1830, when thousands of Native Americans were being ethnically cleansed from the southern states. She was one of the few hundred people who survived in the Smoky Mountains for nine months. These are the gals I respect. Wilma Mankiller, the leader of the Cherokee nation who educated herself from nothing and fought for Native rights – now there’s a woman. What a role model.’
For years, people have got Amos all wrong. Some people think she’s some middle-of-the-road pixie, a real-life Phoebe from Friends, trilling hippy-dippy rhymes about fairy tales and cornflake girls. But, over a quarter of a century and 14 albums, she’s been one of pop’s weirdest and most unpredictable artists. She’s the riot grrrl in concert pianist garb, whose confessional songs tackle rape and religion, feminism and power, art and mythology. Even the sonic background – the florid piano accompaniment, the unorthodox chord changes and symphonic curlicues – has always been seriously weird.
‘I don’t see the piano as a polite, passive instrument,’ she says. ‘You can take what Prince, Jimi Hendrix and Robert Plant were doing and contain that energy on a piano. It’s about maintaining that 220 voltage, of having the chops to be able to contain and focus it on the keys, of using intimacy and power. When I first started, everyone was telling me that the piano had had its time. The label initially rejected my debut album, Little Earthquakes. They said I had to take all the pianos off and replace them with guitars. Screw that. I can be as heavy as any rock guitarist!’

Fly-killing pensioner, 80, hailed a beacon of hope for swatting insects seven days a week

Ruan Tang, 80, swats flies all day (Picture: CEN)

This 80-year-old woman has been held up as a beacon of hope for society after it emerged she swats flies all day.
Ruan Tang has been killing the insects in the Changmingsixiang Community in Eastern China’s Hangzhou City for 14 years.
Despite her age, she reportedly works eight hours a day, seven days a week.
‘I had retired and was looking around for something to do to help the community and prove useful, and I noticed how much flies were troubling people in the summer,’ she said.
‘I decided that killing flies was the best way for me to be useful – and I’ve been doing it now every day since.’
Ruan is a fly killing machine and says she can swat around 1,000 of them each day.
The pensioner has been praised by the Chinese media, which describe the insects as an ‘enemy of the people, noisy, disease spreading and revolting

World’s fattest woman plans to walk up aisle with toyboy lover

56.4st Charity Pierce, 38, has found love with a toyboy almost half her age (Picture: Barcroft)

The world’s fattest woman is determined to walk up the aisle to marry her toyboy lover despite weighing twice as much as him.
Housebound Charity Pierce, who weighs in at 56.4st, needs to lose 20st before her wedding so she can have a life-saving gastric bypass operation.
The 38-year-old from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has already reduced her calorie intake from 10,000 to just 1,200 per day in the hope she can enjoy her first dance with fiancé Tony Saur, 22.
Charity said: ‘I’m determined not to have to get married at home – I want to be able to walk up the aisle.
‘We both love country music so I plan to wear a wedding dress, cowboy boots and cowgirl hat and Tony will be in jeans and cowboy boots.’
Doctors have warned Charity, who has been housebound since 2001, that without significant weight loss she could die.

Teacher gave 15-year-old pupil lap dance on birthday because ‘class convinced her to do it’

   15-year-old pupil arrested after teacher    stabbed to death

A pupil was fatally stabbed at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds (Picture: Ross Parry)

A female teacher has died after a stabbing at a Leeds high school.
A 15-year-old male pupil has been arrested in connection with the attack and is still in custody.
Police were called to Corpus Christi Catholic College in Neville Road, Leeds at 11.48am this morning after being contacted by the ambulance service.
The woman was taken to hospital but was subsequently pronounced dead.
Pupil Georgina Kilroy, 16, said the woman had been a teacher for 40 years.
‘I don’t know anyone who didn’t like her,’ she said outside the school. ‘She was spot on. You couldn’t ask for a better teacher.’

A female teacher has died after a stabbing at a Leeds school (Picture: SWNS)

West Yorkshire Police said there is no current danger to pupils or staff and that the school is ‘continuing to operate as normal’.
Detective superintendent Simon Beldon said: ‘The situation is under control and officers, including safer schools officers and members of the local neighbourhood policing team, are currently at the school and are liaising closely with staff.
‘The rest of the school is continuing to operate as normal and we would ask that parents do not attend the site unless directly requested to do so by the school.
‘Our inquiries are at a very early stage but the full circumstances of this incident will obviously be the subject of a full and thorough investigation.’

Lord we seek your face. Which kind country b dis?

I go write JAMB = Boko Haram
I go Immigration recruitment. = Stampede
I go University = Strike
I no go school = Poverty
I wan travel by air = Plane crash
By sea = Millitants
I travel by road = Accident
I go out to relax = Kidnappers
I go Bank = Armed Robbers
Make i enter bus 4 Nyanya
Motor park Abuja = Bomb blast
I vex use leg go village = WitchCraft
I dey house = No work
I go work = Low Salary
I de room = No light
Make i marry = No money..
Wetin man go do na????

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Mourinho fined by the FA

Mourinho fined by the FA.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has been fined by the Football Association after being found guilty of improper conduct.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has been fined by the Football Association after being found guilty of improper conduct.
The charge relates to an incident during the Blues' defeat to Aston Villa in which the Portuguese tactician entered the field of play after a scuffle following Chelsea midfielder Ramires' sending off.
Mourinho had requested a personal hearing to plead his case, but he was unsuccessful in convincing the FA of his innocence.
"Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has been fined £8,000 and warned as to his future conduct following an independent regulatory commission hearing," the FA said in a statement.
"Mourinho denied a breach of FA rule E3 in that his behaviour in re-entering the field of play and approaching the match referee (Foy) in an attempt to speak to him, in or around the 90th minute of the game against Aston Villa on March 15, 2014, amounted to improper conduct.