AFP

Singer Olivia Newton-John, who gained worldwide fame as high school sweetheart Sandy in the hit musical movie “Grease,” died on Monday after a 30-year battle with cancer. She was 73.

Newton-John “passed away peacefully at her ranch in Southern California this morning, surrounded by family and friends,” said a statement from her husband John Easterling posted on her official social media accounts.

The multiple Grammy-winning entertainer, whose career spanned more than five decades, including chart-topping songs such as “Physical,” devoted much of her time in later years to charities after first being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992.

The British-born and Australian-raised star dedicated a number of albums and concerts to raise funds for research and early detection of the disease, including the construction of a health center named after her in her adopted home Melbourne. 

“I don’t like to say ‘battled,'” a defiant Newton-John told Australia’s Channel Seven TV in September 2018 after revealing she had been diagnosed with cancer for a third time. 

“I like to say ‘win over,’ because ‘battled’ sets up this anger and inflammation that you don’t want.”

No cause of death was given in the family’s statement.

– ‘Sandy and Danny’ –

Newton-John was best known for starring in the 1978 musical “Grease” alongside John Travolta as the-girl-next-door Sandy, who trades her ankle-length skirt and prim and proper hair for skin-tight black pants and a perm.

The high school sweetheart-turned-bad girl resonated with audiences worldwide, and continues to capture hearts decades after the movie was released. 

“Making it was fun but you never know with movies if audiences are going to go with it or not, even if you love it,” she said in a Forbes interview in 2018. 

“It is incredible that it is still going but it’s not even just that, it’s showing no signs of stopping. You say ‘Sandy and Danny’ and people instantly know what you’re talking about.”

Grease remained the highest-grossing musical for three decades, with Newton-John and Travolta maintaining a close relationship long after the film was made.

“My dearest Olivia, you made all of our lives so much better. Your impact was incredible. I love you so much,” wrote Travolta, in an Instagram post Monday signed “Your Danny, your John!”

Travolta has previously said meeting and working with Newton-John “was my favorite thing about doing Grease.”

There was no one else “in the universe” who could play Sandy, he said of Newton-John, who turned 29 during the making of Grease and later revealed she had to be convinced by Travolta to take up the role after self-doubts that she was too old to play a teenager. 

“If you were a young man in the 70s…, if you remember that album cover with Olivia with that blue shirt on, with those big blue eyes staring at you,” Travolta recalled, in an interview to mark the film’s 40 anniversary in 2018.

“Every boy’s, every man’s dream was: ‘Oh I would love for that girl to be my girlfriend’.”

Australian popstress Kylie Minogue said she had loved and looked up to Newton-John since she was a child.

“She was, and always will be, an inspiration to me in so many, many ways,” the singer wrote on Twitter.

– ‘Done everything’ –

Born in Cambridge, England in 1948, Newton-John was the youngest of three children. 

The granddaughter of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born, she immigrated to Melbourne, Australia with her family when she was five. 

A passion for music saw her perform in several Australian TV shows as a teenager, before moving to England in the 1960s where she teamed up with fellow Australian performer Pat Carroll on the UK pub and club circuit.

From the 1970s, she would go on to top international charts for decades with songs that stretched into folk, country and pop, earning four Grammys from 12 career nominations.

The 1981 hit song “Physical,” which saw Newton-John don a headband and spandex amid an 80s fitness culture boom, demonstrated the dexterity of a performer able to reinvent herself amid cultural change.

Despite her multiple cancer diagnoses, she performed into her late 60s, including a two-year residency in Vegas, a 2015 tour with Australian music legend John Farnham, and even recording a Club Dance track at 67 with her daughter Chloe Lattanzi.

Her philanthropy and passion for cancer research came to the forefront, championing natural therapies including medicinal cannabis in the treatment of cancer.

“I have done everything, and the icing on the cake as well,” she said, reflecting on her career. 

“So I feel grateful for anything that happens now.”

A Georgia man and his father convicted of federal hate crimes for the murder of a Black man who was shot dead while jogging were sentenced to life in prison on Monday.

Travis McMichael, 36, and his father, Gregory McMichael, 66, are already serving life sentences after being found guilty in a state trial for the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery.

US District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced both men to life in prison on separate hate crimes charges and denied their requests that they be allowed to serve out their sentences in a federal prison instead of a state facility.

The McMichaels, who are white, chased Arbery in a pickup truck on February 23, 2020 as he jogged through their neighborhood near the town of Brunswick, Georgia.

Travis McMichael confronted the 25-year-old Arbery as he passed by their truck and shot and killed him.

The racially-charged case added fuel to nationwide protests over police killings of African Americans sparked initially by the murder in May 2020 of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

A third man who was involved in the chase, William Bryan, who had a less direct role in the murder and cooperated with investigators, was given life with the possibility of parole on the state charges.

He received a sentence of 35 years in prison on the federal charges.

During the federal hate crimes trial, prosecutors recounted the three men’s alleged use of vulgar racial slurs and history of racism.

“The Justice Department’s prosecution of this case and the court’s sentences today make clear that hate crimes have no place in our country,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

“Protecting civil rights and combatting white supremacist violence was a founding purpose of the Justice Department, and one that we will continue to pursue with the urgency it demands.”

FBI director Christopher Wray said that hate crimes strike “at the very heart of our society.”

“This is why combatting hate crimes and protecting civil rights are top priorities for the FBI,” he said in the statement.

Princess of pop Britney Spears will join forces with music maestro Elton John on a new single, the record company releasing the track said Monday.

The pair — who between them have 90 years’ experience in the music business — will collaborate on “Hold Me Closer,” Interscope Records said.

There were no further details, including when the track would be released, but it will be the first new music from Spears since the middle of the last decade.

The title of the song comes from the lyrics of the early 1970s hit “Tiny Dancer,” which John co-wrote with long-time creative partner Bernie Taupin.

The news comes after days of online speculation from fans that the pair would be teaming up.

It also comes just weeks after Spears announced a long-wished-for pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage.

The pregnancy, with Sam Asghari, came five months after a Los Angeles judge dissolved a conservatorship overseen by Spears’s father — an arrangement the singer said had prevented her from having a contraceptive IUD removed despite her desire for more kids.

Aside from her very public legal battle with her father, the “…Baby One More Time” singer has mostly only been seen on her social media account in recent years.

She has not given an interview in years, rarely makes public appearances and last performed in October 2018.

The superstar, who first came to public attention as a child in 1992, dropped four studio albums under the conservatorship, most recently 2016’s “Glory.”

She also was among the singers to stage wildly lucrative Las Vegas residencies in recent years. Her four-year “Britney: Pieces of Me” run grossed a reported $138 million.

But in January 2019, she abruptly canceled her planned return to Vegas, going on indefinite professional hiatus.

The multi-award-winning John — properly Sir Elton John — is one of Britain’s most bankable stars, whose showmanship and musicality have left their mark on the performing arts.

Since he first emerged in 1962, the singer — born Reginald Dwight — has been responsible for some of the most recognizable tunes in pop, including “Rocket Man,” “Your Song” and “I’m Still Standing.”

After more than a year, aviation giant Boeing will be allowed to resume deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft “in the coming days,” after the company made changes to its manufacturing process, US air safety regulators announced Monday.

Deliveries of the top-selling widebody plane have been halted since spring 2021, so the news will be welcomed by US airlines and travelers who have suffered from massive delays and canceled flights in recent weeks, partly due to the shortage of aircraft.

“Boeing has made the necessary changes to ensure that the 787 Dreamliner meets all certification standards,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

The plane’s travails date to late summer 2020, when the company uncovered manufacturing flaws with some jets. Boeing subsequently identified additional issues, including with the horizontal stabilizer.

The difficulties curtailed deliveries between November 2020 and March 2021. Boeing suspended deliveries later in spring 2021 after more problems surfaced.

Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen met with safety inspectors in South Carolina last week to confirm they were satisfied with the company’s improvements, which were made to ensure they comply with standards and to identify potential risks after defects were uncovered on the plane.

“The FAA will inspect each aircraft before an airworthiness certificate is issued and cleared for delivery,” the statement said. “We expect deliveries to resume in the coming days.”

– Cleared for takeoff –

A company spokesman told AFP that Boeing will “continue to work transparently with the FAA and our customers toward resuming 787 deliveries,” but did not confirm the firm had received final FAA approval.

During a July 27 earnings conference call, Chief Executive Dave Calhoun described the company was “on the verge” of garnering approval, though he declined to give a precise target date.

At the end of June, Boeing had 120 Dreamliner planes in inventory and was producing the jet “at very low rates,” the company said in a filing.

The company’s stock price gained ground on the news, closing 0.5 percent higher.

Inability to deliver the Dreamliner has dragged down Boeing’s profits, which plunged 67 percent in the second quarter. And the manufacturing changes have led to billions in additional costs for the company.

The firm has delivered just over 1,000 of the planes since it was first introduced in 2004.

The enhanced regulatory scrutiny of the 787 and other Boeing planes comes on the heels of a pair of crashes in 2018 and 2019 on the 737 MAX, which led to aircraft being banned from the skies globally for more than a year.

But the MAX has since returned to service, enabling Boeing to ramp up production of the planes, collect meaningful revenues and announce significant new orders at the Farnborough Airshow earlier this month.

Even so, Boeing’s backlog of orders in the pipeline lags behind that of archrival Airbus.

Aviation giant Boeing will be allowed to resume deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft “in the coming days,” after the company made changes to its manufacturing process, US air safety regulators announced Monday.

Deliveries of the top-selling widebody have been halted since spring 2021, but “Boeing has made the necessary changes to ensure that the 787 Dreamliner meets all certification standards,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen met with safety inspectors in South Carolina last week to confirm they were satisfied with the company’s improvements, which were made to ensure they comply with standards and to identify potential risks after defects were uncovered on the plane.

“The FAA will inspect each aircraft before an airworthiness certificate is issued and cleared for delivery,” the statement said. “We expect deliveries to resume in the coming days.”

The 787’s travails date to late summer 2020, when the company uncovered manufacturing flaws with some jets. Boeing subsequently identified additional issues, including with the horizontal stabilizer.

The difficulties curtailed deliveries between November 2020 and March 2021. Boeing suspended deliveries later in spring 2021 after more problems surfaced.

A company spokesman told AFP that Boeing will “continue to work transparently with the FAA and our customers toward resuming 787 deliveries,” but did not confirm the firm had received final FAA approval.

During a July 27 earnings conference call, Chief Executive Dave Calhoun described the company as “on the verge” of garnering approval, though he declined to give a precise target date.

At the end of June, Boeing had 120 Dreamliner planes in inventory and was producing the jet “at very low rates,” the company said in a filing.