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Britney Spears, Newly Free, Says She is Pregnant

File Photo: Singer Britney Spears arrives at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards in New York, US, August 28, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
File Photo: Singer Britney Spears arrives at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards in New York, US, August 28, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
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Britney Spears, Newly Free, Says She is Pregnant

File Photo: Singer Britney Spears arrives at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards in New York, US, August 28, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
File Photo: Singer Britney Spears arrives at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards in New York, US, August 28, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Britney Spears on Monday announced she is pregnant with her third child, five months after a judge ended the controversial guardianship the pop icon said barred her from having more children.

"I got a pregnancy test... and uhhhhh well... I am having a baby," the 40-year-old said on Instagram.

A Los Angeles judge in November dissolved the conservatorship long overseen by Spears' father -- an arrangement the singer said had prevented her from having a contraceptive IUD removed despite her desire for more kids.

Spears' representatives did not immediately respond to AFP request for comment.

"I thought 'Geez... what happened to my stomach???'" Spears wrote, saying that her 28-year-old partner Sam Asghari, whom she has started referring to online as her "husband," speculated she was "food pregnant."

"It's growing !!! If 2 are in there... I might just loose it," added the singer, prompting online chatter that she may be expecting twins.

After a highly public 2007 breakdown, when Spears attacked a paparazzo's car at a gas station, the star was placed under a conservatorship headed by her father Jamie Spears, which ultimately lasted nearly 14 years.

Fans had long sounded alarm that the "...Baby One More Time" singer was unhappy with her father as guardian, and in June 2021 she asked a Los Angeles judge to end the legal arrangement that had left her "traumatized."

Her allegation that the conservatorship was preventing her from removing a contraceptive IUD -- despite her wanting to have authority over her own birth control method in order to get pregnant -- sparked outrage from reproductive rights groups and her fans, many of whom were already involved in the fervent #FreeBritney movement.

"I would like to progressively move forward, and I want to have the real deal," Spears told the court in a bombshell hearing last summer.

"I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I have an (IUD) inside of myself so I don't get pregnant. They don't want me to have children -- any more children," she said during the gripping 20-minute statement.

The formal end to the guardianship in November 2021 came after the pop phenom's father Jamie Spears was removed from his position in charge of her finances and estate at a hearing in September.

- 'Baby-making' -
Britney Spears said Monday that she "won't be going out as much" to avoid trailing paparazzi.

She is already mother to two teen sons, Sean and Jayden, with her ex-husband Kevin Federline.

In her post Monday Spears also opened up about struggles with perinatal depression during previous pregnancies, saying it was "absolutely horrible."

"Women didn't talk about it back then... some people considered it dangerous if a woman complained like that with a baby inside her... but now women talk about it everyday... thank Jesus we don't have to keep that pain a reserved proper secret," the pop star wrote.

During a highly publicized apparent mental breakdown that followed her 2006 divorce and custody battle, Spears was captured in gas stations barefoot and driving with one son in her lap.

Today she and other turn-of-the-millenium female pop stars have drawn sympathy, after documentaries that emphasized the role of the early-2000s celebrity journalism machine in triggering breakdowns and questionable behavior.

But at the time they were paparazzi punching bags, who were also mocked and belittled by national news outlets.

Matt Lauer -- the now-disgraced former morning television personality -- once pushed Spears to tears in a 2006 interview aired on national television, after needling the young artist over her maternal fitness while she was pregnant with her second child.

On Monday Spears did not provide a due date.

She met Asghari in 2016 when they co-starred in a music video for her single "Slumber Party."

Spears announced their engagement on social media in September 2021, but has yet to divulge a date for the nuptials.

Ashgari also took to Instagram Monday, saying that "fatherhood is something i have always looked forward to and i don't take lightly. It is the most important job i will ever do."

Asked by entertainment tabloid TMZ in December about the couple's holiday plans, Asghari was frank: "Baby making."

"A lot of baby making!"

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Entertainment

Perry Bamonte, Keyboardist and Guitarist for The Cure, Dies at 65

Perry Bamonte of The Cure performs at North Island Credit Union Amphitheater on May 20, 2023 in Chula Vista, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
Perry Bamonte of The Cure performs at North Island Credit Union Amphitheater on May 20, 2023 in Chula Vista, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Perry Bamonte, Keyboardist and Guitarist for The Cure, Dies at 65

Perry Bamonte of The Cure performs at North Island Credit Union Amphitheater on May 20, 2023 in Chula Vista, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
Perry Bamonte of The Cure performs at North Island Credit Union Amphitheater on May 20, 2023 in Chula Vista, California. (Getty Images/AFP)

Perry Bamonte, keyboardist and guitarist in The Cure, has died at 65, the English indie rock band confirmed through their official website on Friday.

In a statement, the band wrote that Bamonte died "after a short illness at home" on Christmas Day.

"It is with enormous sadness that ‌we confirm ‌the death of our ‌great ⁠friend and ‌bandmate Perry Bamonte who passed away after a short illness at home over Christmas," the statement said, adding he was a "vital part of The Cure story."

The statement said Bamonte was ⁠a full-time member of The Cure since 1990, ‌playing guitar, six-string bass, ‍and keyboards, and ‍performed in more than 400 shows.

Bamonte, ‍born in London, England, in 1960, joined the band's road crew in 1984, working alongside his younger brother Daryl, who worked as tour manager for The Cure.

Bamonte first worked as ⁠an assistant to co-founder and lead vocalist, Robert Smith, before becoming a full member after keyboardist Roger O'Donnell left the band in 1990.

Bamonte's first album with The Cure was "Wish" in 1992. He continued to work with them on the next three albums.

He also had various acting ‌roles in movies: "Judge Dredd,About Time" and "The Crow."

Entertainment

First Bond Game in a Decade Hit by Two-month Delay

'007 First Light' depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill. Ina FASSBENDER / AFP
'007 First Light' depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill. Ina FASSBENDER / AFP
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First Bond Game in a Decade Hit by Two-month Delay

'007 First Light' depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill. Ina FASSBENDER / AFP
'007 First Light' depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill. Ina FASSBENDER / AFP

A Danish video game studio said it was delaying the release of the first James Bond video game in over a decade by two months to "refine the experience".

Fans will now have to wait until May 27 to play "007 First Light" featuring Ian Fleming's world-famous spy, after IO Interactive said on Tuesday it was postponing the launch to add some final touches.

"007 First Light is our most ambitious project to date, and the team has been fully focused on delivering an unforgettable James Bond experience," the Danish studio wrote on X.

Describing the game as "fully playable", IO Interactive said the two additional months would allow their team "to further polish and refine the experience", giving players "the strongest possible version at launch".

The game, which depicts a younger Bond earning his license to kill, is set to feature "globe-trotting, spycraft, gadgets, car chases, and more", IO Interactive added.

It has been more than a decade since a video game inspired by Bond was released. The initial release date was scheduled for March 27.

Entertainment

Movie Review: An Electric Timothee Chalamet Is the Consummate Striver in Propulsive ‘Marty Supreme’

Timothee Chalamet attends the premiere of "Marty Supreme" at Regal Times Square on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP)
Timothee Chalamet attends the premiere of "Marty Supreme" at Regal Times Square on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP)
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Movie Review: An Electric Timothee Chalamet Is the Consummate Striver in Propulsive ‘Marty Supreme’

Timothee Chalamet attends the premiere of "Marty Supreme" at Regal Times Square on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP)
Timothee Chalamet attends the premiere of "Marty Supreme" at Regal Times Square on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP)

“Everybody wants to rule the world,” goes the Tears for Fears song we hear at a key point in “Marty Supreme,” Josh Safdie’s nerve-busting adrenaline jolt of a movie starring a never-better Timothee Chalamet.

But here’s the thing: everybody may want to rule the world, but not everybody truly believes they CAN. This, one could argue, is what separates the true strivers from the rest of us.

And Marty — played by Chalamet in a delicious synergy of actor, role and whatever fairy dust makes a performance feel both preordained and magically fresh — is a striver. With every fiber of his restless, wiry body. They should add him to the dictionary definition.

Needless to say, Marty is a New Yorker.

Also needless to say, Chalamet is a New Yorker.

And so is Safdie, a writer-director Chalamet has called “the street poet of New York.” So, where else could this story be set?

It’s 1952, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Marty Mauser is a salesman in his uncle’s shoe store, escaping to the storeroom for a hot tryst with his (married) girlfriend. This witty opening sequence won’t be the only thing recalling “Uncut Gems,” co-directed by Safdie with his brother Benny before the two split for solo projects. That film, which feels much like the precursor to “Marty Supreme,” began as a trip through the shiny innards of a rare opal, only to wind up inside Adam Sandler’s colon, mid-colonoscopy.

Sandler’s Howard Ratner was a New York striver, too, but sadder, and more troubled. Marty is young, determined, brash — with an eye always to the future. He’s a great salesman: “I could sell shoes to an amputee,” he boasts, crassly. But what he’s plotting to unveil to the world has nothing to do with shoes. It’s about table tennis.

How likely is it that this Jewish kid from the Lower East Side can become the very face of a sport in America, soon to be “staring at you from the cover of a Wheaties box?”

To Marty, perfectly likely. Still, he knows nobody in the US cares about table tennis. He’s so determined to prove everyone wrong, starting at the British Open in London, that when there’s a snag obtaining cash for his trip, he brandishes a gun at a colleague to get it.

Shaking off that sorta-armed robbery thing, Marty arrives in London, where he fast-talks his way into a suite at the Ritz. Here, he spies fellow guest Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow, in a wise, stylish return to the screen), a former movie star married to an insufferable tycoon (“Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary, one of many nonactors here.)

Kay’s skeptical, but Marty finds a way to woo her. Really, all he has to say is: “Come watch me.” Once she sees him play, she’s sneaking into his room in a lace corselet.

This would be a good time to stop and consider Chalamet’s subtly transformed appearance. He is stick-thin — duh, he never stops moving. His mustache is skimpy. His skin is acne-scarred — just enough to erase any movie-star sheen. Most strikingly, his eyes, behind the round spectacles, are beady — and smaller. Definitely not those movie-star eyes.

But then, nearly all the faces in “Marty Supreme” are extraordinary. In a movie with more than 100 characters, we have known actors (Fran Drescher, Abel Ferrara); nonacting personalities (O’Leary, and an excellent Tyler Okonma (Tyler, The Creator) as Marty’s friend Wally); and exciting newcomers like Odessa A’Zion as Marty’s feisty girlfriend Rachel.

There are also a slew of nonactors in small parts, plus cameos from the likes of David Mamet and even high wire artist Philippe Petit. The dizzying array makes one curious how it all came together — is casting director Jennifer Venditti taking interns? Production notes tell us that for one hustling scene at a bowling alley, young men were recruited from a sports trading-card convention.

Elsewhere on the creative team, composer Daniel Lopatin succeeds in channeling both Marty’s beating heart and the ricochet of pingpong balls in his propulsive score. The script by Safdie and cowriter Ronald Bronstein, loosely based on real-life table tennis hustler Marty Reisman, beats with its own, never-stopping pulse. The same breakneck aesthetic applies to camera work by Darius Khondji.

Back now to London, where Marty makes the finals against Japanese player Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi, like his character a deaf table tennis champion). “I’ll be dropping a third atom bomb on them,” he brags — not his only questionable World War II quip. But Endo, with his unorthodox paddle and grip, prevails.

After a stint as a side act with the Harlem Globetrotters, including pingpong games with a seal — you’ll have to take our word for this, folks, we’re running low on space — Marty returns home, determined to make the imminent world championships in Tokyo.

But he's in trouble — remember he took cash at gunpoint? Worse, he has no money.

So Marty’s on the run. And he’ll do anything, however messy or dangerous, to get to Japan. Even if he has to totally debase himself (mark our words), or endanger friends — or abandon loyal and brave Rachel.

Is there something else for Marty, besides his obsessive goal? If so, he doesn’t know it yet. But the lyrics of another song used in the film are instructive here: “Everybody’s got to learn sometime.”

So can a single-minded striver ultimately learn something new about his own life?

We'll have to see. As Marty might say: “Come watch me.”