Lindsay Lohan arrested in New York, accused of punching woman

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lindsay Lohan was arrested outside a New York nightclub on an assault charge early Thursday after she punched another woman in the face, police said, marking another legal dustup for the 26-year-old "Mean Girls" actress.

Lohan and the 28-year-old unidentified woman had some sort of a dispute inside the club Avenue in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood around 4 a.m., police said.

Lohan, who has faced a series of legal and financial troubles in recent years, punched the woman in the face multiple times, said New York Police Sergeant John Buthorn, adding that the victim sustained "minor, minor injuries."

Lohan was arrested on a third-degree misdemeanor assault charge, police said.

She was released from police custody later on Thursday morning. Wearing a green, knee-length dress, black tights and high heels, Lohan was hustled from NYPD's 10th Precinct House with a personal security guard's blazer draped over her head and into a waiting SUV, which quickly drove away.

She will have to return to court at a later date to face the charge, police said. Calls and an email to her publicist were not immediately returned.

The arrest came during an already rough week for Lohan, whose latest performance as Hollywood screen legend Elizabeth Taylor in the TV movie "Liz & Dick" was panned by critics. Cable TV channel Lifetime said on Monday that a modest 3.5 million Americans watched the film that premiered last weekend.

Earlier this month she canceled an in-depth interview with ABC's Barbara Walters, who said she suspected the actress' publicity team pulled the plug knowing Walters would ask tough questions.

Lohan's recent visits to New York have been peppered with run-ins with police and public spats.

Last month police were called to the Long Island home of Lohan's mother, Dina Lohan, where she and her mother had become involved in a loud, early-morning argument. Nassau County Police left the scene without making any arrests.

In September Lohan was arrested in Manhattan after a pedestrian told police that her Porsche had struck him in an alley.

She was initially charged with leaving the scene of an accident, a misdemeanor, but a late-October court date was canceled and another date was not scheduled, an indication prosecutors decided not to proceed with that case.

Also in September, she scuffled with a man at a New York hotel over what media reports described as her demand that photographs he had taken of her be deleted from his cellphone.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins and Dan Burns; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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Beyonce to direct documentary about herself for HBO

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop superstar Beyonce is stepping behind the camera to direct a behind-the-scenes documentary about her personal and professional life, U.S. cable channel HBO said on Monday.

The currently untitled film will debut on February 16 and show the Grammy-winning singer's life in the recording studio, readying for live performances and running her own TV and music production company.

"Everybody knows Beyonce's music, but few know Beyonce the person," HBO Programming President Michael Lombardo said in a statement. "Along with electrifying footage of Beyonce on stage, this unique special looks beyond the glamour to reveal a vibrant, vulnerable, unforgettable woman."

The documentary will also feature moments in the "Crazy in Love" singer's family life and first-person footage Beyonce captured on her laptop.

Beyonce, 31, who is married to hip hop artist and mogul Jay-Z, will headline the Super Bowl halftime show in New Orleans on February 3.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Andrew Hay)

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Ex-Elmo puppeteer faces new sex-with-minor allegation

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The puppeteer formerly behind the "Sesame Street" character Elmo faces a new accusation of having sex with an underage boy, a week after a similar allegation prompted him to resign from the iconic public television children's program.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, a man identified only as John alleges Kevin Clash engaged in oral sex and other sex acts with him when John was 16 years old. The suit seeks at least $75,000 in damages.

The suit alleges the incident occurred in either 2000 or 2001 when John, who is from Florida, visited New York for modeling opportunities. John came to know Clash, then 40, through a telephone chat line for gays on which Clash claimed to be a 30-year-old named Craig, according to the suit.

John returned to New York when he turned 18, and he and Clash renewed the relationship, the lawsuit said.

"Mr. Clash believes the lawsuit has no merit," Clash's publicist, Risa B. Heller, said in an emailed statement.

It is the latest charge levied against Clash, now 52, who resigned on November 20 from Sesame Workshop, the company behind "Sesame Street," after nearly 30 years on the show.

His resignation came the same day Cecil Singleton filed a claim seeking more than $5 million in damages from Clash. Singleton claims he met the then-32-year-old puppeteer in 1993 in a gay chat room when he was 15.

It added that on numerous occasions over a period of years Clash engaged in sexual activity with Singleton.

The newest allegation comes about two weeks after another man recanted his claims that Clash had sex with him when he was 16 years old. The man later said the relationship was consensual.

Clash had denied the allegations and acknowledged a past relationship with his first accuser. He added the pair were both consenting adults at the time.

The Elmo character debuted on "Sesame Street" in 1979, 10 years after the show premiered and introduced the now-iconic characters Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster, among others, to American children.

While Clash was the third performer to animate the child-like shaggy red monster, Sesame Workshop credits him with turning Elmo into the international sensation he became.

(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Cynthia Osterman)

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Former presidential nominee Dole in hospital: media reports

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole has been admitted to Washington's Walter Reed Army medical center for what an aide called a "routine procedure," media reports said on Tuesday.

Dole, 89, "self-checked into the hospital for a routine procedure and will be discharged tomorrow," an aide told NBC News. "He's doing very well."

According to Politico, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said on the Senate floor on Tuesday that Dole was hospitalized "because he is infirm. He is sick."

Reid's comments came during debate on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Dole, who was severely wounded during World War Two, had sent a letter to the Senate urging passage.

Dole, a former Senate majority leader from Kansas, lost the 1996 presidential election to Democratic incumbent Bill Clinton. Dole served as a senator from 1969 to 1996.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Paul Simao)

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X Factor judge Louis Walsh settles defamation case

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Television personality and pop music producer Louis Walsh on Wednesday settled a 500,000 euro ($640,000) defamation case against News Group Newspapers in Ireland.

The deal came after Walsh, best known for his role as a judge on the hit television show "The X Factor", sued the group for publishing a story last year based on false allegations that he had groped a man in a Dublin night club.

Leonard Watters, who made the accusations before later retracting them, was jailed for six months earlier this year.

Paul Tweed, Walsh's solicitor, said: "The publishers of the Irish, UK and online editions of the Sun have this morning unreservedly apologized to Louis Walsh.

"They have also agreed to pay very substantial damages of 500,000 euros together with his legal costs."

Walsh, who managed Irish boy bands Westlife and Boyzone, said the story had a "terrible effect" on him.

"I'm very satisfied with this morning's total vindication for me, but I remain very angry at the treatment I received at the hands of the Sun," he said outside court.

"I have the utmost respect and time for most journalists with whom I've always enjoyed a good relationship, and I'm therefore absolutely gutted and traumatized that these allegations should have been published

"I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy."

The Sun said it apologized "unreservedly".

(Reporting by Sarah O'Connor)

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A Minute With: Pop star Ke$ha on new album "Warrior"

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop star Ke$ha made a name for herself with infectious dance-pop hits but the singer-songwriter is stepping out of her Auto-Tune comfort zone on "Warrior", out this week.

Ke$ha, 25, stormed the charts with hit songs about drinking, partying and having a good time, such as "TiK ToK" and "Your Love is my Drug" from her 2010 platinum-selling album "Animal".

Ke$ha talked with Reuters about the pressures of following up the success of her first album and responding to her critics.

Q: Did you feel additional pressure while working on this album after the success of your debut, "Animal"?

A: "Everybody keeps asking me about pressure, and I think a lot of other people maybe are feeling pressure about this record, but I just want to make a good record. If I sat around trying to make a number one record, I'd just be too consumed with that. I just want to make an awesome, kick-ass record that I love and that my fans love."

Q: Was there anything that you weren't happy with on the first album and that you wanted to change for the second?

A: "I just wanted to make sure my entire personality was presented more accurately. I feel like people really got to know the super-wild side of me but then sometimes a more vulnerable side. I didn't really feel comfortable expressing it. So this time I kind of forced myself to express a little bit more vulnerability, less Auto-Tune, less vocal trickery. It's a little more raw."

Q: You received a lot of criticism for your use of Auto-Tune, masking your true singing voice. Was that a valid criticism for you, when many others use it?

A: "I remember having this conversation with my producer, and him saying, 'We're using a lot of vocal tricks,' and I said, 'People will get to know me as my career goes on, I just want it to sound really weird and cool and clubby right now, and super electronic.' I made a conscious decision to use Auto-Tune for effect, as ear candy, and vocoders and chop up my words.

"This time around, I have heard so many different people say I can't sing, it's quite frankly irritating, so I ... made a five-song acoustic EP ('Deconstructed', out on December 4) that's kind of like my middle finger to all those people that said I couldn't sing, and there's more of my voice on this record. You know, haters are going to hate, you just have to do what you want to do."

Q: Talk us through some of the collaborations on "Warrior". There's quite a variety, such as with Iggy Pop and Ben Folds.

A: "Ben Folds is a friend of mine. He gave me a giant glitter grand piano that's in my house, so that one was natural. The Flaming Lips was probably surprising for a lot of people because we're two super-different genres of music but we had the most fun and we made so many songs, it was super insane. We're like best friends, we text everyday now, so that kind of came naturally. The one that I really have been working on for years was a collaboration with Iggy Pop. He's one of my favorite musicians and artists of all time, so that was super exciting for me, because I respect him so much."

Q: You've written tracks for Kelly Clarkson and Britney Spears, and you've written all the songs for "Warrior". What did you want to bring out in your lyrics this time round?

A: "I definitely wanted to maintain the irreverence, because that's why my fans like me. It's because I'm super honest, not always PG rated ... but I didn't want to let the haters somehow cramp my style or get the best of me, so I maintain my irreverence ... I also really wanted to show the other side of my personality, which kind of is more nerve-wracking to show people, being a real person and the vulnerable side of my personality and voice. So there are tracks on this record that are super vulnerable and were hard even to write. I had to force myself to sit down and write these songs."

Q: You've carved a distinctive image and also just launched your latest collaboration with Baby-G watches. How do you want to evolve your career in the future?

A: "I think that with this record, I really wanted to show that there are no rules or boundaries in art, at all, like I sing and I can use crazy Auto-Tune vocoders and I can rap and I can do a song with Iggy Pop. You can do all these things that make sense. You don't have to just be one thing, like, you don't adhere to any sort of stereotype or any boundaries or any rules, so for me it's really fun to break down these boundaries."

Q: You came in at the forefront of the electronic dance music explosion in the pop charts two years ago. Why do you think EDM is doing so well?

A: "Dancing is one of the ways we, as adult human beings, still get to play and it's socially acceptable. Little kids play all the time, but as we grow up, we're supposed to just not play anymore, so our version of that is going out and dancing, and I think it's one way people are still visceral and animal-like."

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Dale Hudson)

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Sculptor Gormley wants us to get inside his head

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's foremost living sculptor Antony Gormley wants us to get inside his head with his latest work "Model", a 100-tonne steel maze of cubes and squares, dark corners and splashes of light on show at the White Cube gallery in London.

The giant grey-black work, based on a human form lying down, is entered via the right "foot", and combines the fun of an adventure playground with the unnerving quality of a labyrinth often plunged into darkness.

For the first time, the Turner Prize-winning artist who has always been preoccupied with the human form allows us to get inside, and draws parallels between the body and the architectural spaces we inhabit.

"I think we dwell first in this borrowed bit of the material world that we call the body," Gormley told Reuters, standing beside the imposing structure made up of interlocking blocks.

"It has its own life that is unknowable. But the second place we dwell is the body of architecture, the built environment," he added.

"We're the most extraordinary species that decided to structure our habitat according to very, very abstract principles of horizontal and vertical planes."

Model has plenty of surprises. The more nimble visitor can crawl through its left "arm", which is a passage around three feet high, or clamber on to a roof bathed in light.

"There are places that you wouldn't necessarily know are there," Gormley said. As if to prove his point, he disappeared into a large raised "aperture" invisible in the darkness.

Sound also plays a part, with the resonance of voices and rumble of footsteps giving clues to the size of each space.

PLAYGROUND

The artist said he encouraged people to explore the work rather than just look, unlike most sculptures which are strictly off-limits.

"Psychological architecture suddenly starts to reverberate with human life," he explained, adding that the sense of unease when entering the dark spaces was part of its appeal.

"I think creepiness is good," he said in the pitch-black "head". "I think it's necessary to get under people's skin. You don't want them to easily ingest or accept something."

Several times he referred to the Seagram murals of American painter Mark Rothko, works that inspired him as an artist and which he had in mind while making Model.

"Their surfaces give you this idea of space, or an invitation, they seat you at a threshold and allow you to dream of what exists beyond that threshold," he said.

"You could say this is the literal version of that."

Gormley, born in 1950, won the Turner Prize in 1994 and is probably best known for his 20-metre high public "Angel of the North" sculpture located near Newcastle in northern England.

He would not say what price the White Cube gallery had put on Model, and the gallery itself could not immediately provide a figure when asked, but Gormley has become one of the most sought-after British artists at auction.

A life-size iron maquette for Angel of the North fetched 3.4 million pounds ($5.4 million) at an auction at Christie's in October last year.

Early critical reaction to Model was mixed.

"We think of the pyramids, of tombs in lightless spaces," wrote Michael Glover in the Independent. "We have entered this space hoping for a visceral response of some kind, but it never quite happens."

Model is on display at White Cube, Bermondsey, until February 10, 2013.

(This story has fixed typos in paragraph six)

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Ecuador says WikiLeaks' Assange suffering lung problems

QUITO (Reuters) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is suffering from a chronic lung ailment that could worsen at any time and is being checked regularly by doctors, the Andean country's ambassador to Britain said on Wednesday.

Assange, 41, whose website angered the United States by releasing thousands of secret diplomatic cables, has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in London since June to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations. Assange has denied any wrongdoing.

"He has a chronic lung complaint that could get worse any time. The Ecuadorean state is covering Mr Assange's medical costs and we have arranged for regular doctor visits to check on his health," Ambassador Ana Alban told a local TV network during a visit to Quito.

British authorities say Assange will be arrested if he sets foot outside the embassy. The building, located just behind London's famed Harrods department store, is under constant police surveillance.

Ecuador said last month it is worried about Assange's health and asked Britain to guarantee him safe passage to hospital from the embassy if he needs medical treatment.

That would allow him to return to the embassy after treatment with refugee status.

Assange took refuge in the embassy after running out of legal options to avoid being sent to Sweden. Ecuador granted him asylum in August and said it shared his fears that he could be sent from Sweden to the United States to face charges over WikiLeaks' activities.

U.S. and European government sources say the United States has issued no criminal charges against him, nor launched any attempts to extradite Assange.

Assange is said to be living a cramped life inside the modest diplomatic mission. He eats mostly take-out food and uses a treadmill to burn off energy and a vitamin D lamp to make up for the lack of sunlight.

On Tuesday, the Australian former computer hacker accused "hard-right" U.S. politicians of pressing European credit card firms to block more than $50 million in donations to WikiLeaks, and said that had forced the website to reduce the volume of documents it posted online.

Speaking to reporters in the embassy's gilt-corniced conference room, Assange said his stay there had been "difficult in many ways" and that any resolution of the standoff would be "a matter of diplomacy."

He refused to comment on his health or how long he may have to stay in the embassy, declaring those subjects "off-topic."

In late August, Assange said he expected to wait six months to a year for a deal that would allow him to leave the embassy.

(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Jackie Frank)

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Outgoing Mexican President Calderon to become Harvard fellow

CAMBRIDGE, Mass (Reuters) - Outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon will become a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government starting in January after his six-year term ends, the school said on Wednesday.

During the year-long fellowship, Calderon, an alumnus of the school, will meet with students, collaborate with scholars and researchers and help develop case studies on policy challenges he encountered while serving as Mexico's president, the school said in a statement.

"This fellowship will be a tremendous opportunity for me to reflect upon my six years in office, to connect with scholars and students at Harvard, and to begin work on the important papers that will document the many challenges that we faced," Calderon said in a statement.

Harvard's Kennedy School draws political leaders from around the world who serve as fellows or instructors after they leave power. Notable names serving as fellow include former World Bank chief Robert Zoellick and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.

Former students include Bo Guagua - the son of Bo Xilai, a one-time star of Chinese politics who this year was ousted as leader of the city of Chongqing amid a scandal stemming from the murder of a British businessman - and Paula Broadwell, the author of a book on former Central Intelligence Agency chief General David Petraeus, who resigned his post at the CIA after an affair with Broadwell.

Calderon earned a master's degree at the school in 2000 and went on to stake his presidency on fighting Mexico's drug cartels. He hands the country's reins to President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto on December 1.

(Reporting By Daniel Lovering; editing by Scott Malone and Cynthia Osterman)

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Robert Kennedy's son is sued for assault

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A son of slain U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was sued for assault on Tuesday by two nurses at a New York hospital who say they sustained injuries while trying to stop him from leaving the maternity ward with his newborn son.

The $200,000 civil suit also accuses Douglas Kennedy, 45, of negligence, battery and emotional distress and comes a week after a criminal court judge acquitted him of child endangerment and harassment charges related to the incident.

Two maternity ward nurses, Cari Luciano and Anna Lane, tried to physically block Kennedy from taking his boy outside for some fresh air on January 7 in Westchester County, just north of New York City. That led to a seven-minute confrontation in which Kennedy kicked Luciano into the air and twisted Lane's arm, according to the civil complaint.

Kennedy, a Fox News correspondent and the 10th child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, categorically denies all allegations the nurses have made and expects to be completely exonerated, his attorney Michael Bono said.

The attorney representing Luciano and Lane did not immediately return calls requesting comment.

Kennedy's actions violated Northern Westchester Hospital's policy on transporting infants, Mount Kisco Town Justice John J. Donohue said in a ruling on the misdemeanor charges released on November 20, but did not rise to the level of criminality.

Kennedy's kicking of Luciano was a spontaneous response to her attempts to physically retake his baby, and Lane's allegations of arm-twisting were "not supported by any evidence except her own testimony," Donohue wrote in his ruling.

On the charges of child endangerment, there was no evidence to suggest "that the mere act of taking his child outside the building would likely be injurious to the child's physical welfare," Donohue wrote.

In a February appearance on NBC's 'Today' show, Luciano and Lane said Kennedy physically hurt them during the incident and that they were seeking a public apology from him.

There was "no basis at all for the nurses to lay claim to one penny from Douglas," said Robert Gottlieb, the attorney who represented Kennedy in the criminal suit.

It was an "utter disgrace that the nurses continue to abuse" the justice system, said Gottlieb, who is not representing Kennedy in the civil suit.

(Additional reporting by Chris Francescani; editing by Daniel Trotta and Todd Eastham)

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