NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

Madonna’s tour to start in Israel

NEW YORK

Madonna’s not finished with stadiums.

Live Nation Entertainment announced Tuesday that the Material Girl’s first tour since 2009 will include a Sept. 6 show at Yankee Stadium.

On Sunday, she was the Super Bowl halftime performer at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Her world tour will start May 29 in Tel Aviv, Israel. It will include performances in Istanbul, Brussels, Helsinki and Zurich.

The North American portion of the tour will include Montreal, San Jose and Cleveland.

The tour also will visit South American and Australia.

Tickets for most of the U.S. shows go on sale Monday.

Madonna’s last tour, 2008-09’s “Sticky & Sweet,” grossed more than $400 million.

Her new album, “MDNA,” is scheduled for release March 26.

Chris Brown to sing at the Grammys

NEW YORK

Chris Brown will perform at this year’s Grammy Awards, the event where his career almost ended three years ago.

Brown assaulted then-girlfriend Rihanna at a pre-Grammy party in 2009 and is serving five years’ probation for the felony attack. A source told The Associated Press on Monday that Brown will hit the stage at Sunday’s show. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because Brown’s performance has not been officially announced.

After his attack on Rihanna, Brown’s reputation plummeted. But he has since bounced back, releasing multiple mixtapes and the multihit album, “F.A.M.E. [Forgiving All My Enemies].” It’s nominated for three Grammys.

Rihanna will also perform at the show. She’s up for four awards.

Brown and Rihanna were supposed to perform at the 2009 Grammys.

Marvel hits refresh button on its heroes

PHILADELPHIA

It’s a familiar tale: Science genius, smart girlfriend, her hot-shot brother, and a football-player-turned-accomplished-pilot travel to space, get bombarded by cosmic rays and come back a foursome with fantastic powers.

But it’s a story born of the early 1960s when phones were on hooks, faces were in books and tweets were coming from the robin down on Jaybird Street.

Marvel Comics is updating the origin of the Fantastic Four this week in a sleeker tale dubbed “Season One” with a more contemporary vibe, while sticking to the roots of Reed Richards, Sue Storm, brother Johnny and Ben Grimm, otherwise known for the past 51 years as Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing.

Think tablet PCs instead of room-sized computing machines.

The revision is part of Marvel’s push to add modern touches to its characters. Marvel also is bringing a modern spin to the origins of its other classic characters this year in similar “Season One” editions, including Daredevil, Spider-Man and the X-Men.

“The aim is definitely to continue to keep these characters relevant in an ever-changing world, but also to tell a new story set within this time frame, not merely recount or retell comics that other people have previously done,” said Tom Breevort, who edits the publisher’s Fantastic Four line of books.

Critic wins award for best ‘hatchet job’

LONDON

A critic who accused a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of scattering literary allusions such as “tin cans tied to a tricycle” has won a prize for the year’s most lacerating book review.

Adam Mars-Jones’ review of Michael Cunningham’s novel “By Nightfall” was named the winner of the Hatchet Job of the Year Award.

The review condemns the novel’s pretensions, saying it is “filled with thoughts about art, or [more ominously] Thoughts about Art.”

Mars-Jones, a British-born novelist, was awarded a golden hatchet and a year’s supply of potted shrimp at a ceremony Tuesday in London.

The U.K.-centric prize was established by review aggregating website The Omnivore to honor “the angriest, funniest, most trenchant” review published in a newspaper or magazine in 2011.

Vindicator wire services