• Taylor Swift didn't divulge any new secrets about her forthcoming album when she took the stage at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, but the crowd's enthusiasm about her bouncy new single "Shake it Off" seems to bode well for the new record. Swift, dressed in a bedazzled, bubble gum pink skirt and top, opened for the fourth annual festival Friday with hits including "Love Story" and "I Knew You Were Trouble." A parade of chart-toppers followed her in the nearly five-hour program, including Coldplay, Usher, NickI Minaj and Ariana Grande. The two-day festival continued Saturday with performances by Lorde, Iggy Azalea, Ed Sheeran, One Direction and more. Friday brought a steady dose of hits ranging from Coldplay's classic "Clocks" and "Viva la Vida" to Minaj's "Superbass." Performances got rowdier as the night went on. Motley Crue's rendition of "Girls, Girls, Girls" was a frenzy of motorcycles, pyrotechnics and pole dancers. The Zac Brown Band, a country-folk group, covered Queen's raucous "Bohemian Rhapsody."
• An actress who was detained by Los Angeles police is refusing to apologize for claiming race played a role in the incident, despite calls from local civil-rights leaders. Daniele Watts, who appeared in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, issued a statement late Friday through her publicist after civil-rights activists demanded that she apologize for suggesting she was handcuffed for kissing her white boyfriend in public. Watts and boyfriend Brian Lucas were questioned recently by officers investigating a report of lewd conduct in a parked car. Watts, who is black, refused to provide identification. She was briefly handcuffed until police identified her. The incident went viral after she and Lucas claimed on their Facebook pages that the detention reflected racial profiling. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who initially rallied behind the actress, said she "cried wolf" in this instance. "I was one that was very outspoken about it," he told reporters. "We take racial profiling very seriously. It's not a play thing. It's not trivial." Watts made no mention of race in her statement, but she maintained that she wasn't obligated to present identification to police. "It is a constitutional right that we do not have to present ID to any member of law enforcement unless we are being charged with a crime," she said.
A Section on 09/21/2014