By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A Los Angeles city councilwoman day took a leave of absence from her post on Tuesday as a furor raged around her and two colleagues over racist comments she was heard making on an audiotape of their private conversation.

Democrat Nury Martinez, who resigned her leadership post a day earlier, announced her leave of absence in a statement issued before the regularly scheduled council meeting.

“This has been one of the most difficult times of my life and I recognize this is entirely of my own making,” Martinez, 49, said in the statement.” At this moment, I need to take a leave of absence and take some time to have an honest and heartfelt conversation with my family, my constituents, and community leaders.”

Council members Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, who were heard on the recorded call along with local labor leader Ron Herrera, have issued apologies for their part in the inflammatory conversation but have defied calls to step down.

A White House spokeswoman said on Tuesday that U.S. President Joe Biden believed that all three should resign.

“He believes that they all should resign. The language that was used and tolerated during that conversation was unacceptable, and it was appalling. They should all step down,” Karine Jean-Pierre told a White House briefing.

Both Cedillo and de Leon left the council meeting as raucous protesters demanded their resignation.

Herrera resigned on Monday night from his position as president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The recorded conversation took place in October 2021 but came to light only this week after it was posted on a Reddit message board and reported by the Times.

Martinez is heard on the tape saying that council member Mike Bonin, who is white, treated his Black son as if he were an “accessory” and compared him to a “changuito,” which translates roughly as “little monkey.”

Martinez also disparaged Mexicans from Oaxaca and voiced her displeasure with Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, saying “he’s with the Blacks.”

Martinez was first elected to the city council in 2013 and became president in 2020.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by David Gregorio)

Washington (AFP) – US President Joe Biden on Tuesday voiced confidence that he could beat his predecessor Donald Trump in a 2024 rematch — even as he acknowledged the country could sink back into recession under his leadership.

The 79-year-old Democrat was asked if he’d be announcing a run for a second term after November’s midterm elections — and if Trump would be a factor in his decision.

“I believe I can beat Donald Trump again,” Biden responded, although he stopped short of confirming another tilt at the Oval Office in 2024.

Biden defeated Trump in both the state-by-state “electoral college” and the popular vote in 2020 — leading to relentless false claims of widespread voter fraud from the defeated president.

Biden indicated to reporters at a NATO summit in March that he would be happy for Trump to be his opponent again.

Biden’s popularity has taken a hit in the last year amid soaring inflation, rising violent crime in cities and a seemingly intractable migrant crisis at the southern border.

But his approval ratings still outrank the numbers seen in polling for Trump, who regularly mocks Biden — three years his senior — for his age.

CNN asked Biden what he would tell voters who consider him too old for reelection. 

“Name me a president in recent history that’s gotten as much done as I have in the first two years. Not a joke. You may not like what I got done, but the vast majority of the American people do like what I got done,” Biden replied.

“And so… it’s a matter of, can you do the job? And I believe I can do the job.”

In a wide-ranging interview that took in the war in Ukraine and Saudi-led oil production cuts that are expected to send gas prices soaring again, Biden was asked about fears for the economy amid gloomy growth projections.

Biden downplayed the likelihood of a recession but conceded a “slight” downturn is possible.

“I don’t think there will be a recession. If it is, it’ll be a very slight recession. That is, we’ll move down slightly,” he said.

Trump, 76, came to power during the longest economic expansion in US history, although the economy tumbled into recession in 2020 as the world was gripped by the Covid-19 outbreak.

Biden frequently takes questions from the media, but he has held few press conferences or one-to-one televised interviews.

He has been more visible recently as he takes to the road to talk up Democratic legislative achievements and slam “MAGA Republicans” — followers of former president Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda — in the final weeks of the midterm election campaign. 

He also sat down with CBS in September, making headlines for declaring the pandemic over and confirming US commitment to defending Taiwan from a Chinese assault.

Kevin Spacey flirted with a 19-year-old John Barrowman and “lay on a bed with him”, a court has heard.

The former ‘House of Cards’ star is being sued by the ‘Torchwood’ actor’s old schoolmate, Anthony Rapp, who has accused the disgraced actor of assaulting him at a party in 1986 when he was just 14 years old and Spacey was more than a decade older, and as their legal battle continued in Manhattan on Tuesday (11.10.22), the judge was told the trio met in the 1980s.

According to testimony from John, now 55, he was staying with Anthony when they met Spacey backstage at a New York theatre before going out to dinner and later to a club, and the ‘American Beauty’ star’s lawyer, Jennifer Keller, said the actor’s attention had been on the former ‘Dancing On Ice’ judge but “nothing inappropriate” had occurred.

She asked Anthony, who was on the witness stand, if he believed he had been “seen as a tag-along” but he replied “no”.

The lawyer then quoted part of John’s deposition which had not been made public before, in which he stated they had gone back to Spacey’s apartment and lay on the bed, but did not engage in any sexual activity because of his friend’s presence.

John later sent flowers to the ‘Usual Suspects’ star and the pair stayed in touch, with the older actor often calling his new friend and his mother, which she “enjoyed”.

This account differed from Anthony’s, who had earlier testified they had gone home immediately after going to the nightclub.

Spacey’s lawyer asked him: ““It was right after Mr. Barrowman was deposed you realised you had a problem with your story,”

The ‘Rent’ actor replied: “I don’t dispute his story. I just don’t remember it.”

Elsewhere during the cross-examination, Ms. Keller questioned a speech Anthony gave in 2018, in which he credited Lupita Nyong’o’s New York Times article about her Harvey Weinstein experiences as the reason he came forward about Spacey.

She said: “It’s simply not true that her article inspired you, is it?”

He replied: “I don’t know how that can’t be true.”

The lawyer then pulled up a copy of the article, which was dated 19 October, 2017, before showing screenshots of a conversation between the ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ star and his friend, BuzzFeed reporter Adam Vary.

The first was dated 11 October and Anthony had written: “I’m wanting to speak about someone else very powerful in our industry.”

His pal replied two days later: “I think everyone here wants to be sure your story has the strongest impact possible.”

Asked about the messages, Anthony said: “It was how I remember the events unfolding when I thought back on them.”

The lawyer scornfully said: “They weren’t 31 years old, were they?”

She then argued the anecdote about Lupita had been seen as “useful to you to get more sympathy,” but the witness insisted that wasn’t the case as he “conflated” the op-ed with the wider allegations about Weinstein.

Despite his alleged ordeal, Anthony admitted he had watched Spacey in many films, on television and in theatre performances since then, arguing it was his “duty” as an actor to watch the star’s work, but insisted he had “never wanted a career” like his.

Anthony filed a civil suit against Spacey after a 2020 criminal charge of sexual assault was dismissed by a judge and is seeking compensation for mental and emotional suffering, medical expenses and loss of work.

Spacey has previously pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually assaulting three men between March 2005 and April 2013 in the UK, while in 2019, charges of indecent assault and sexual assault were dropped in Massachusetts.

Cyndi Lauper’s late mother has inspired her to launch an abortion fund.

The ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ singer has set up the Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights Fund to support organisations fighting for abortion and reproductive healthcare in the wake of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which previously protected women’s rights to an abortion, in June this year.

Cyndi said: “If you don’t have control over your own body, how can you be anything but a second-class citizen?

“Now, the government has control over your body – not you.

“What should be a private medical decision between you and your doctor is now a government decision. So, this is a big issue for me.”

Cyndi’s mother Catrine – who appeared in a number of her music videos, including for song ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ – died aged 91 earlier this year following a battle with Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.

The singer said: “She was in hospice, and we were together. We tried to make it as comfortable as I could for her. We made it like a spa,” she says. “She was incredible, and I’m just lucky that I got to have her as my mom because it inspired me to do so many things, including this Girls Just Wanna Have Fundamental Rights Fund.”

Cyndi has also dropped a lyric video for her 1993 abortion rights song ‘Sally’s Pigeons’, which she recently re-released as an acoustic version.

She told PEOPLE: [‘Sally’s Pigeons’] was about newspaper headlines – ‘Found Another Dead Young Woman.’

“[There were] lots of dead young women from illegal abortions that were not safe because you couldn’t have a safe procedure.

“Young people don’t know what it was like. I saw it every day. I knew how it affected a lot of young women.”

Cyndi shared a new version of the track in late June, and she said at the time: “The Supreme Court’s radical decision makes the re-recording and re-release of ‘Sally’s Pigeons’ more relevant than ever.

“In my childhood, women didn’t have reproductive freedom and 50 years later we find ourselves in a time warp where one’s freedom to control their own body has been stripped away.”

Bill Murray reportedly paid a “much younger” production assistant $100,000 after being accused of “inappropriate behaviour”.

The 72-year-old actor’s film ‘Being Mortal’ shut down production in April after an allegation was made against him, and a new report has alleged the ‘Groundhog Day’ star grabbed the unnamed woman near a production bed, kissed her on the mouth – though both were wearing face masks due to COVID-19 protocols 0 and kissing her body while “straddling her”.

According to Puck, “the woman interpreted his actions as entirely sexual” and was “horrified” by the actor’s alleged conduct, which was also reported by a second staff member, who witnessed the alleged incident.

Sources told the outlet Murray settled the claim out of court for $100,000 in exchange for the woman – who was said to have been “particularly friendly” with the actor – agreeing to maintain confidentiality and giving up her rights to later sue the producers of the film, Searchlight, and Disney.

The ‘French Dispatch’ star previously claimed he had “done something [he] thought was funny” on the set of the film and hoped to “make peace” with the woman.

He said: “I did something I thought was funny, and it wasn’t taken that way.

“The company, the movie studio, wanted to do the right thing, so they wanted to check it all out, investigate it. and so they stopped the production.

“As of now, we’re talking and we’re trying to make peace with each other. I think that’s where the real issue is, between our peace.

“We’re both professionals, we like each others’ work.”

Bill has “done not much else but thinking about it” in recent weeks and claimed the incident and its fallout have been an “education” for him.

He continued: “We like each other, I think, and if we can’t really get along and trust each other, there’s no point in going further working together or making the movie as well. It’s been quite an education for me.

And I feel like if I don’t see that, you know, the world is different than it was when I was a little kid. You know, what I always thought was funny as a little kid isn’t necessarily the same as what’s funny now. Things change and the times change, so it’s important for me to figure it out. And I think the most important thing is that it’s best for the other person. I thought about it, and if it’s not best for the other person, doesn’t matter what happens for me.

“[I wondered], ‘How could I misperceive? How could I be so inaccurate and so insensitive when you think you’re being sensitive to some sensibility that you’ve had for a long time?’

“ So we’re talking about it. We’re, I think we’re gonna make peace with it. I’m very optimistic about that.

“I think it’s a sad dog that can’t learn anymore. I think that’s a really sad puppy that can’t learn anymore. I don’t want to be that sad dog and I have no intention of it.”

Filming on the movie – which is Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut – has yet to resume.

Lizzo will get married when she wants to “start a business” with her partner.

The ‘Juice’ singer is “in love” with Myke Wright and sees them as “life mates” but she would only want to legally affirm their union if it made financial sense.

She said: “I’ve known him for over six years. He’s everything. We’re just in love. And that’s it.”

Asked about her recent admission she doesn’t believe in monogamy, she added to Vanity Fair magazine: “Is monogamy a religion? People fight for monogamy like they pray to it every day.

“I am not a polyamorous person, I’m not in love with multiple partners. That is not me. He’s the love of my life. We are life mates. Do I want to get married? If I wanted to start a business with him, I’d get married because that’s when your finances come together.”

The 34-year-old star admitted she would like to have a wedding.

She said: “I like weddings. I would like to have a wedding over a marriage.”

While Lizzo is “connected” to Myke, she insisted she doesn’t need him to feel “complete”.

She explained: ” I’m not thinking about sex when I think about monogamy and rules. I’m thinking about the autonomy and independence of him and me.

“How wonderful would it be to be this complete independent person and to come together to make two complete independent people? Not that whole ‘You complete me, you’re my other half.’

“No. I’m whole, and you’re incredible too. We’re like the mirror image of each other. We’re connected. But that doesn’t mean I was incomplete when I met him.”

While some stars have admitted to missing the “normal” things they did before finding fame such as running their own errands, the ‘Good as Hell’ hitmaker is delighted to have left them behind her.

She exclaimed: “Hell no! I worked at the grocery store. I pushed carts in the winter at King Soopers in Aurora, Colorado.

“I used to go to the grocery store all the motherf****** time. I used to get quarters and go to the lavandería to wash my motherf****** clothes. I’ve done all these things; I had very normal formative years.”

Read ‘Lizzo Is Here to Talk About All of It—That Flute, That Lyric, Her Man, and More’ by Lisa Robinson in Vanity Fair’s November issue, and on VanityFair.com

The world’s richest person Elon Musk has begun selling bottles of Burnt Hair, a perfume being marketed as the “essence of repugnant desire.”

Some 10,000 bottles of Musk musk have already been sold, the tech innovator said on Twitter on Wednesday, reporting a million dollars in Burnt Hair sales.

Musk, the tech innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla and other enterprises, is selling the perfume in the shop of his tunnel construction project, The Boring Company.

The apparent joke perfume costs $100 or €105 a bottle, making it perhaps the world’s most expensive perfume with an offensive and off-putting name.

Tongue-in-cheek marketing talks up the scent as being “just like leaning over a candle at the dinner table, but without all the hard work.”

Delivery dates have not yet been set and little information is given about the fragrance. The company is instead leaving it to the celebrity billionaire’s cult status to do the promotion.

Musk, who wields massive influence on markets with his 108 million followers on Twitter, whom he has been accused of trolling, previously prompted bumps in cryptocurrencies and a racketeering lawsuit after lending his support to Dogecoin.

Burnt Hair is not the Boring Company’s first novelty product, and Musk previous sold a reported 20,000 flamethrowers through the same website.

Chris Colfer has refused to see Lea Michele in ‘Funny Girl’.

The 32-year-old actor has no interest in going to watch his former ‘Glee’ co-star take on the role of comedienne Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival of the classic musical and when asked if he wanted to tag along to a show, he appeared to dodge the question by referring to fellow stage hit ‘Six’ but eventually confirmed that he won’t attend ‘Funny Girl’ because he can be “triggered” at home.

Speaking on ‘The Michelle Collins Show’ on SiriusXM, he said: “Oh my day suddenly got so full! Sorry! Sorry! Well, I saw ‘Six’ last night and it was amazing. No, [I’m not going], I can be triggered at home.”

Lea replaced ‘Booksmart’ actress Beanie Feldstein in ‘Funny Girl’ in September and was said to have received four standing ovations on her opening night but had previously caused controversy when she expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement and was subsequently hit with allegations of bullying from an actress Samantha Ware, who alleged that she had been the victim of derogatory comments relating to her race when the pair were filming ‘Glee’ together.

In response to Lea’s comments, Samantha wrote on Twitter: “LMAO REMEMBER WHEN YOU MADE MY FIRST TELEVISON GIG A LIVING HELL?!?! CAUSE ILL NEVER FORGET. I BELIEVE YOU TOLD EVERYONE THAT IF TOU HAD THE OPPORTUNITY YOU WOULD “‘S*** IN MY WIG!’ AMONGST OTHER TRAUMATIC MICROAGRESSIONS THAT MADE ME QUESTION A CAREER IN HOLLYWOOD… (sic).”

Lea subsequently issued an apology – although she admitted she couldn’t specifically remember making hurtful remarks towards her former co-star.

She said at the time: “What matters is that I clearly acted in ways which hurt other people. One of the most important lessons of the last few weeks is that we need to take the time to listen and learn about other people’s perspectives and any role we have played or anything we can do to help address the injustices that they face.”

Brendan Gleeson joined the ‘Joker’ sequel to work with Joaquin Phoenix.

The 67-year-old actor has been cast in ‘Joker: Folie a Deux’ and revealed that he joined the Todd Phillips film to collaborate with Phoenix after the pair starred in the 2004 film ‘The Village’ together.

Brendan confirmed that the success of the original movie – with Joaquin claiming the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck/Joker – also played a part in persuading him to take the role.

Asked how the ‘Joker’ sequel appealed to him, he told Collider: “It wasn’t the material, which is a great way to get me out of having to answer any questions about the criteria.

“It was the achievement of the first film. I worked with Joaquin before on ‘The Village’… And so I knew him from then.”

Brendan continued: “And that performance, I’m still in awe of it. That performance as Joker, in that first movie. It was one of the most extraordinary achievements I’ve ever had.

“And for Todd to have – Worked the movie around to allow for that, I didn’t have to be asked twice. I really didn’t.”

Lady Gaga has been cast in the sequel as Harley Quinn and Margot Robbie – who played the Joker’s love interest in three movies – loves the idea of the character being passed around by “great actors”.

The 32-year-old actress said: “It makes me so happy because I said from the very beginning, all I want is for Harley Quinn to be one of those characters, the way Macbeth or Batman always gets passed from great actor to great actor.

“And I feel like in not so many cases are they female characters.

“Queen Elizabeth I, but like beyond that — which I got to have a crack at as well, which I was honoured to do. I was like, ‘Wow, Cate Blanchett did Queen Elizabeth I. Now I get to.’ “

Washington (AFP) – NASA on Tuesday celebrated exceeding expectations during a mission to deflect a distant asteroid, in a sci-fi like test of humanity’s ability to stop an incoming cosmic object from devastating life on Earth.

The fridge-sized Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor deliberately smashed into the moonlet asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, pushing it into a smaller, faster orbit around its big brother Didymos, NASA chief Bill Nelson announced.

That changed its orbital period by four percent, or 32 minutes — from 11 hour 55 minutes to 11 hours 23 minutes, bettering an expectation of 10 minutes.

“At some point in the future, if we find an asteroid that is threatening to hit Earth, and would be large enough to really do some damage, thank goodness that we will have had this successful test,” Nelson told AFP.

The asteroid pair loop together around our Sun every 2.1 years, and pose no threat to our planet.

But they are ideal for studying the “kinetic impact” method of planetary defense.

DART’s success as a proof-of-concept has made a reality what was once science fiction — notably films such as “Armageddon,” “Deep Impact,” and “Don’t Look Up.”

Never actually photographed before, Dimorphos, which is 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter or roughly the size of a big Egyptian pyramid, appeared as a speck of light around an hour before impact.

Its egg-like shape and craggy, boulder-dotted surface finally came into clear view in the last few moments, as DART raced toward it at roughly 14,500 miles (23,500 kilometers) per hour.

Pseudo-comet

In the days that followed, astronomers rejoiced in stunning images of matter spreading out thousands of miles — pictures collected by Earth and space telescopes, as well as a tiny companion satellite that traveled to the zone with DART.

Thanks to its temporary new tail, Dimorphos has turned into a man-made comet.

But quantifying just how well the test worked required an analysis of light patterns from ground telescopes, which took a few weeks to become apparent.

The binary asteroid system, which was around 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth at impact, is visible only as a single dot from the ground.

The dot’s brightness changes as Dimorphos passes in front of Didymos, which is significantly bigger at half-a-mile wide.

Four optical telescopes were involved in measuring the orbital period — all in Chile and South Africa — while two US based radar telescopes helped confirm the finding, said NASA planetary scientist Nancy Chabot.

The test also showed scientists that the asteroid is less like a solid rock, and more like a “rubbish pile” of boulders bound by mutual gravity.

If an asteroid is more solid, the momentum imparted by a spaceship will be limited. But if significant mass is pushed at high velocity in the opposite direction to impact, there will be an additional boost.

“It looks like the recoil from the ejecta blast off the surface was a substantial contributor to the overall push given to the asteroid,” said NASA scientist Tom Statler at a briefing.

The test will serve as an “anchor point” for simulations and calculations about the outcome of future impacts, he added.

Mass extinction

No known asteroid larger than 140 meters (460 feet) in size — big enough to devastate a city — has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, according to NASA.

But wait long enough, and it will happen.

The geological record shows, for example, that a six-mile wide asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, plunging the world into a long winter that led to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs along with 75 percent of all species.

The agency plans to launch in 2026 a telescope called the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor to better characterize potentially hazardous 140-meter asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles. 

So far, less than half of the estimated 25,000 NEOs of 140 meters have been discovered.

Kinetic impact with a spaceship is just one way to defend the planet, albeit the only method possible with current technology.

Should an approaching object be detected early, a spaceship could be sent to fly alongside it for long enough to divert its path via using the ship’s gravitational pull, creating a so-called gravity tractor.

Another option would be launching nuclear explosives to redirect or destroy an asteroid.

NASA believes the best way to deploy such weapons would be at a distance, to impart force without blowing the asteroid to smithereens, which could further imperil Earth.