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Quick Takes: Randy Travis faints onstage

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Country singer Randy Travis was resting at home Monday after passing out on stage during a benefit concert in front of a roomful of doctors.

The 52-year-old performer fainted in mid-song Sunday during an annual benefit for the Huguley Memorial Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas.

The doctors who treated him at the scene said Monday that Travis was struggling with laryngitis because of chronic allergies and had taken several over-the-counter medications.

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—Associated Press

New ‘Red Dawn’ to invade at last

A remake of the 1984 invasion movie “Red Dawn” — with its villains now digitally modified from Chinese to North Korean — will finally hit American shores next year.

The new version of the Reagan-era classic will be released in the U.S. by independent studio FilmDistrict, according to people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly. FilmDistrict is finalizing a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio that produced the movie in 2009, with Chris Hemsworth in the starring role.

In the original “Red Dawn,” a group of teenagers in a Colorado town battle invading Soviet forces; in the remake, the invaders were changed to Chinese. But that decision turned the film into a hot potato.

After MGM emerged from bankruptcy in late 2009 and decided it wouldn’t release the movie, no other studio wanted to touch “Red Dawn” for fear of offending the government of China, a hugely important market in the increasingly global film business. As a result, the movie’s producers last winter used digital technology and creative editing to change most of the invaders to North Koreans.

—Ben Fritz and John Horn

Sly Stone is living in camper

Soul music legend Sly Stone, best known as the frontman of Sly and the Family Stone, has squandered his fortune and is living homeless on the streets of Los Angeles.

“I like my small camper,” Stone told the New York Post in an article co-written by William Alkema, director of a documentary about the band. “I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I cannot stand being in one place. I must keep moving.”

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Stone once lived in a Beverly Hills mansion and a Napa Valley compound. But the Post reported that his fortune was stolen “by a lethal combination of excess, substance abuse and financial mismanagement.”

He lives now in a white camper that he parks in L.A.’s Crenshaw neighborhood. A retired couple feeds him daily and allows him to shower in their home, the paper reported.

—Kimi Yoshino

Shakira honored by Latin group

Shakira was named Monday as the 2011 Latin Recording Academy person of the year.

The 34-year-old Colombian singer and seven-time Latin Grammy winner will be honored Nov. 9 at the 12th annual Tribute Gala in Las Vegas for her artistic and philanthropic contributions.

—Associated Press

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