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FILE - This Oct. 23, 2021, file photo, shows the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, N.M., where actor Alec Baldwin pulled the trigger on a prop gun while filming “Rust” and unwittingly killed a cinematographer and injured a director. Experts predict a tremendous legal fallout. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

The Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, N.M., where actor Alec Baldwin pulled the trigger on a prop gun while filming “Rust” (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Actor Alec Baldwin has shared a message on social media disputing reports of chaos and a lax attitude toward safety on the set of Western movie Rust before he accidentally shot and killed a cinematographer.

Writing "Read this," Baldwin on Tuesday reposted lengthy remarks from Terese Magpale Davis, who worked in the wardrobe department on Rust.

"I'm so sick of this narrative," Davis wrote.

"The story of us being overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions is bulls**t."

On October 21, cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed by a bullet discharged from a gun Baldwin was using to rehearse a scene on the Rust set in New Mexico.

The 30 Rock actor had been told the weapon was "cold," or safe to use, according to court filings by the Santa Fe Sheriff's Department, which is investigating the incident.

Camera operators had walked off the Rust set before the incident to protest working conditions, authorities have said. Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza last week said he believed there was complacency on the production regarding safety.

Lawyers for the armourer in charge of the weapons used in the filming said the production was unsafe due to various factors, including a lack of safety meetings.

Davis, however, said the crew had several safety meetings, "sometimes multiple per day".

The production team "were some of the most approachable and warm producers I have ever worked with", she added.

"Concerns were heard and addressed."

Davis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Baldwin, who also served as one of the movie's producers, has said he is heartbroken and will support limits on the use of real guns on film and TV sets.

Production company Rust Media Productions said it had not been made aware of any official complaints and has hired a law firm to investigate the incident.

You can read the rest of the posted messages at Alec Baldwin's Instagram.

© RAW 2021

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 elon musk world hunger

Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, says he will sell $US6 billion ($A8 billion) worth of Tesla stock and donate the proceeds to the United Nations' food agency if it could show how the money would solve world hunger.

His statement came after UN World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley challenged Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and other billionaires in a CNN interview last week, calling on them to step up on "a one-time basis" to help end starvation.

In the interview, Beasley said billionaires could give "$US6 billion ($A8 billion) to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don't reach them."

"It's not complicated," he said.

That money would be approximately two per cent of Musk's fortune, nearly $US300 billion ($A400 billion), according to Forbes.

His wealth and the wealth of many American multi-billionaires has grown quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to increased stock and home equity, even more than before the virus struck.

The SpaceX founder posted on Twitter on Sunday saying: "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $US6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it."

"But it must be open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent," he added.

In 2020, the agency received $US8.4 billion ($A11.2 billion) in donations, which it says was $US5.3 billion ($A7.1 billion) short of its requirements. Its top donors include the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Beasley responded to Musk on Twitter, writing $US6 billion ($A8.0 billion) will not solve world hunger, "but it WILL prevent geopolitical instability, mass migration and save 42 million people on the brink of starvation. An unprecedented crisis and a perfect storm due to Covid/conflict/climate crises."

He also offered to meet with Musk to discuss the topic.

"Please publish your current & proposed spending in detail so people can see exactly where money goes," Musk said in a Twitter reply. "Sunlight is a wonderful thing."

It remained unclear on Monday whether a meeting will be set.

© AP 2021

Image: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File; Twitter/Elon Musk

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Harry Styles was "off to see the Wizard" as he stepped out in front of the crowd for a gig at New York Madison Square Gardens looking absolutely wonderful.

 

The crowd was filled with all sorts of ghouls, ghosts zombies but they weren't "in Kanzas anymore" (in fact they never were) and instead were transported to the land of OZ as Harry thought he'd do Halloween in "style" with a cute little "Dorothy" outfit complete with a basket for Toto the dog and some amazing ruby slippers.

The whole band joined in as well with guitarist Mitch Rowland as the Cowardly Lion, bass player Elin Sandberg as Glinda the Good Witch and Niji Adeleye on Keys as the Tin Man. The band's drummer Sarah Jones frocked up as the Wicked Witch of the West.

Only one thing could make the night even more OZ.. and that's a performance of Somewhere Over the Rainbow as this Twitter user captured.

 

 

At the end of the show, Harry clicked his heels together three times and exited to well-deserved applause.

 

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Forty years after he penned his call-to-action about the "over-corporatisation" of Australia in his iconic anthem Down Under, songwriter Colin Hay says not enough has changed.

The self-confessed "tree hugger from way back", who wrote the song for his erstwhile band Men at Work, says in the generation that has passed, the problems have only intensified.

"There's a great unconsciousness about the fact there is a whole continent and 20 odd million people get to run it and to be in it and to look after it, and I don't think we're doing a particularly good job," Hay told AAP.

"Its about being good caretakers of the country, which I don't think we are."

Over four decades, Down Under has become synonymous with true blue culture. As Aussie as Vegemite.

The global number one became an anthem for Australia's 1983 America's Cup win, was used in Crocodile Dundee II and was sung at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 - not to mention arm-in-arm in bars around the world.

Not bad for a song that only took Hay 40 minutes to write.

"Those 40 minutes have looked after me for the last 40 years," Scottish-born Hay laughs.

But while the video and verses are a quirky, satirical take of a larger-than-life Aussie travelling abroad, to Hay the the song was really about his fear of "the man".

"My fear was the corporate world, the conservative world I didn't want to belong to, and I still don't want to belong to," Hay says from his home in the Los Angeles mountains.

If he were writing it now, he would still be issuing the same call-to-action, he says.

"Things are a lot more time sensitive now ... they are getting to a tipping point," he says, adding world leaders are failing on issues like climate change.

"It makes me worry about the future - of not the planet so much but humanity's place in it."

When the global pandemic put the entertainment world on hold, Hay found an opportunity to revisit and reflect on songs from his past that held meaning for him.

What started as a sentimental trip down memory lane resulted in an album of covers that took Hay on a personal journey.

"It was strangely emotional because I got to revisit those songs and what they meant to me - not only now but what they meant to me then," he says.

"You have these emotions stored away inside and you're unaware that they'll be released when you revisit those songs. It's an interesting process."

The album includes Hay's versions of The Kinks' Waterloo Sunset, The Beatles' Norwegian Wood and the title track I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself, originally sung by Dusty Springfield.

An eclectic mix, not meticulously curated but simply songs that sprang into his head, he says. His emotional connection to them is felt throughout.

No surprise, then, that his connection to Down Under is felt so much deeper.

"It really is like an old pal," he says.

"And 40 is a good number."

© AAP 2021

Images: Images: YouTube/menatwork, Inset: AAP Image/Supplied by Sony Music Australia