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Britney Spears was charged in California on Thursday with driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old pop star was charged with a single misdemeanour count of driving under the combined influence of alcohol and at least one drug, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office said.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press’s to a Spears representative seeking comment was not immediately answered.<\/p>\n
A criminal complaint does not specify what kind of alcohol or drugs, or what amount, Spears is accused of having used.<\/p>\n
Spears, who has since entered substance abuse treatment, was arrested March 4 after she was pulled over for driving her black BMW fast and erratically on U.S. 101 near her home, the California Highway Patrol said. <\/p>\n
She appeared to be impaired, took a series of field sobriety tests, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of a combination of alcohol and drugs and was taken to a Ventura County jail, the CHP said.<\/p>\n
She was released on bail the following day. Police completed their investigation and presented it to prosecutors on March 23.<\/p>\n
A representative at the time called the singer’s actions “completely inexcusable” and said it would ideally be “the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Spears voluntarily checked into a substance abuse treatment facility just over a month after the arrest, her representative said.<\/p>\n
Arraignment set for Monday<\/p>\n
Spears’s arraignment is set for Monday. Because it is a misdemeanour charge, she will not be required to appear in court, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
The onetime teen pop phenomenon and Mickey Mouse Club alum became a defining superstar of the 1990s and 2000s with hits like Toxic, Gimme More and I’m a Slave 4 U. Most of her albums have been certified platinum, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, with two diamond titles: 1999’s Baby One More Time and 2000’s Oops! \u2026 I Did It Again.<\/p>\n
Spears became a focus of tabloids in the early 2000s, and a source of public scrutiny, as she battled mental illness and paparazzi documented the details of her private life.<\/p>\n
In 2008, Spears was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship, run primarily by her father and his lawyers, that would control her personal and financial decisions for well over a decade. It was dissolved in 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since then, she has married and divorced, and released a bestselling, tell-all memoir, The Woman in Me.<\/p>\n
She has essentially been retired as an artist in recent years, releasing only a few collaborative singles since her last full album in 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-639594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}