The Rolling Stones‘ Keith Richards has warned Amy Winehouse off drugs, stating that she “isn’t going to be around long” if she doesn’t stop.

The guitarist also said that the singer is his favourite modern artist.

Richards explained: “There’s only one [singer I like], that girl Amy. Mind you, that girl isn’t going to be around long unless she sorts herself out pretty quick. Amy’s got to get smart.

“I’m not a preacher. But I’ve been there and you have to pass it on.”

Speaking to the Mail On Sunday, Richards also compared her legal problems with those of The Rolling Stones in the 1970s, saying: “It completely took over our lives creatively and we couldn’t do this and couldn’t do that.

“You had to spend all your time trying to deal with the police. The same thing has happened to Amy Winehouse.”

A Los Angeles hospital will fire some employees and discipline others for looking at the confidential medical records of pop star Britney Spears.

Spears was treated in the hospital’s psychiatric ward.

UCLA Medical Center confirmed the action but could not say how many employees were affected.

The hospital did not say when the snooping took place or which of Spears’ records were looked at.

The Los Angeles Times newspaper reported on its website that the breaches stemmed from incidents before Spears’ most recent treatment, but did not elaborate.

The newspaper said more than 13 employees, none of whom are doctors, would be fired.

Twelve others, including several doctors, will be disciplined for looking at her computerised records, it reported.

Could Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the aspiring singer embroiled in the prostitution scandal that toppled New York governor Eliot Spitzer, have a music career?

Top talent scouts are weighing in on her chances after the 22-year-old racked up millions of MySpace views and launched much-sought-after new songs on priced-by-demand Web site AmieStreet.com since the Spitzer story broke.

Before Dupre’s MySpace page was deleted Thursday, it had received 4,612,397 views and her song “What We Want” touted 711,334 plays. According to the New York Times, two tracks Dupre released to AmieStreet.com this week received thousands of listens and their prices rocketed from free to the maximum price of 98 cents Thursday. The number of blog posts mentioning Dupre also rose over 750% in the last 48 hours according to Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

Here is what some major A&R (artists and repertoire) executives told Billboard.com about her prospects:

“I think her song is absolutely terrible. If people are interested in signing her, then they shouldn’t be in the music business. It’d be a shame to exploit her talent based on the unacceptable reality that she was involved in. Most importantly, it destroyed multiple families. I don’t think the scandal will help her at all. In fact, I think the public is a bit smarter than we think they are. Even though she’s had over a million hits on her MySpace, I think people are just going there to see her pictures and laugh at her attempt to pursue a music career.”

– CHRIS ANOKUTE, Capitol Records Senior A&R Director

“The funny thing about this is that I read the story this morning, about (Dupre) wanting to be a singer, and I thought to myself that I really wanted to reach out to her. I’d be interested in what the music sounds like. I sit around hours and hours every day trying to figure out ways to break new artists. Right now, she has a platform to reach the masses, which is the toughest thing for a new artist to attain. Whether it’s a good platform or a bad one, either way she has it. It all comes down to the music at the end of the day. If the music is good, she’ll be able to get it heard.”

Rihanna is thrilled – and grateful – that the leukemia-stricken New York City mother of two she came forward to help has found a bone marrow donor.

“There are no words to express how happy I am for Lisa [Gershowitz-Flynn] and her family,” Rihanna said . “I am so thankful she found a donor and I feel honored to be a part of such an amazing miracle.”

Last month the Grammy-winning singer put out a plea for help, and Flynn, 41, who learned she has an aggressive form of cancer called Acute Myelogenous Leukemia the day after Thanksgiving, quickly found a donor.

“This blessing has continued to keep me aware of how precious life really is,” says Rihanna. “I will be praying for Lisa and her family as they move into a hopeful future.”

When a United Nation’s panel released a report criticizing “celebrity ‘endorsement’ of drug-related lifestyles,” they seemed to be talking about Amy Winehouse, a singer in the British tabloids more for her partying than for her songs, although one of them was a screed against rehab.

Over the weekend, another U.N. official stepped up to the plate for a more specific whacking. From an Op-Ed by Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in The Observer:

Amy Winehouse might adopt a defiant pose and slur her way through ‘Rehab’, but does she realise the message she sends to others who are vulnerable to addiction and who cannot afford expensive treatment? Are such stars who flaunt their drug use aware of the damage caused by the trafficking of cocaine from South America via Africa to Europe? One song, one picture, one quote that makes cocaine look cool can undo millions of pounds’ worth of anti-drug education and prevention.

Why is this behaviour socially acceptable? If Ms Winehouse advertised fur coats or blood diamonds, there would be a backlash, yet when she is the poster girl for drug abuse, nobody seems to care.

But the Winehouse camp was not taking this laying down, as these remarks via CNN showed:

Winehouse’s spokesman, Chris Goodman, called Costa a “ludicrous man.”

“Amy has never given a quote about drugs or flaunted it in any way,” Goodman told the newspaper. “She’s had some problems and is trying to get better. The U.N. should get its own house in order.”

The U.N. might argue that its recent push against celebrities was part of getting its house in order on drug control. Was it a wise move?