SAN ANTONIO (AP) – San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker was cited for impeding traffic and failing to produce a valid Texas driver’s license during a traffic stop in which “Desperate Housewives” actress Eva Longoria was his passenger, police said.

The incident happened about 12:45 a.m. Saturday. After seeing a car stopped, a bicycle officer said it was impeding traffic. When the car didn’t move, the officer rapped the hood with the palm of his hand, according to a police report.

Parker, who was behind the wheel, questioned why the officer touched the car, and the couple “began screaming in a verbally abusive and demeaning manner,” police said. Longoria called the police report “highly inaccurate.”

Police say Parker then began to drive away, almost hitting a man standing nearby. After being told to stop and get out, Parker showed a French driver’s license, police said.

The officer who wrote the citations said Parker complained: “This is all the cops do, just mess with people,” and that Longoria shouted from the car: “He’s just a Mexican bike cop. He only wants your autograph.”

Longoria denied making the comment.

“It’s a shame that one officer conducted himself in such an inappropriate and disorderly manner. I never made any sort of racial slurs, let alone made any comments about the officer being Mexican, as a Mexican myself,” Longoria said through her publicist.

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MIAMI (AP) – When it came time to direct “The Producers,” Susan Stroman had a simple approach: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Stroman, who directed and choreographed the award-winning stage production, was tapped by Mel Brooks to transfer the energy onto the screen with stars Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

“Right from the start, Mel said, “Do the musical,”‘ Stroman told The Miami Herald in Friday’s editions. “So it was really about finding a way to take this musical, which is in proscenium, and give it four walls and a sky.”

Stroman said the musical numbers gave her the chance to pay homage to the old movie musicals that inspired her as a child, including “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

“I ended up working in theater, because the movie musical genre was dead, but I still wanted to fulfill the passion I felt when I saw Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing. So now to have had the opportunity to direct a movie musical – me, who has lived her whole life doing musicals – is really beyond dreams realized.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Risk? There was nothing to risk for Felicity Huffman in playing a man becoming a woman.

“I’m not a beauty. That’s not my thing. So it wasn’t like I was risking anything,” Huffman told the San Francisco Chronicle in Sunday’s editions. “What I was risking is whether I could do it. There are many places to fall.”

Huffman, 43, was nominated for two best-actress Golden Globes on Dec. 14 – as Stanley/Bree in the film “Transamerica” and as the beleaguered mom Lynette in TV’s “Desperate Housewives.”

As for rumors of dissension with co-stars Nicollette Sheridan, Teri Hatcher, Eva Longoria and Marcia Cross, Huffman denied them.

“They were waiting for us to fight before we even started airing,” she said. “I mean, it was last year before we even got on the air, and we were reading rags, and I’d say, ‘Look, Nicollette. I’m in a fight with you.”‘

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PARIS (AP) – A French children’s magazine named as its “Child of the Year” a British schoolgirl credited with saving about 100 tourists at a Thai beach when the tsunami struck last year.

The upcoming issue of “Mon Quotidien,” which hits newsstands Tuesday, features a smiling Tilly Smith on its cover.

Smith, now 11, had studied tsunamis in her geography class in Oxshott, a small community just south of London, two weeks before going to Thailand on vacation.

On a morning walk on a Phuket island beach on Dec. 26, 2004, Smith recognized the warning signs that a tsunami was coming when she saw “bubbling on the water… and foam sizzling just like in a frying pan.”

She told her parents and alerted staff at the Marriott Hotel, where they were staying. The beach was evacuated minutes before waves struck. The beach was one of the few on Phuket where no one was killed or seriously hurt.

Nearly 400 readers of the magazine, which caters to children aged 10-14, responded to a year-end survey to elect a child who left the greatest mark on 2005.

“If Tilly hadn’t been there, the tsunami would have killed more people,” said one 10-year-old respondent.