LOS ANGELES (AP) – “Spider-Man” star Tobey Maguire and his fiancee, Jennifer Meyer, are parents of a baby girl, according to magazine reports.

Meyer, a 29-year-old jewelry designer, gave birth Thursday in Los Angeles, Us Weekly and People magazines reported on their Web sites.

Maguire, 31, and Meyer have been together since 2003. They announced their engagement this year.

Maguire, whose latest “Spider-Man” installment, “Spider-Man 3,” is due next year, has also starred in such films as “Seabiscuit” and “Wonder Boys.”

Maguire’s publicist did not immediately respond to phone messages from The Associated Press.

NEW YORK (AP) – Justin Timberlake is working on Duran Duran’s new album, along with superproducer Timbaland, who created recent smash hits for both Timberlake and Nelly Furtado, the British band said.

“We’ve got some good stuff happening,” said lead singer Simon LeBon. “We’ve done three tracks with Timbaland; we’ve collaborated in a writing and production manner on one of those tracks with Justin Timberlake. We’ve got a lot really hot producers who are hotly interested in working with us at the moment. We are in a very good space.”

Duran Duran, who had its biggest hits in the ’80s with such songs as “Rio” and “The Reflex,” was in New York last Tuesday to perform at Cipriani’s at a benefit for the AIDS research organization AmFar. The night also featured an auction, led by Sharon Stone, of luxury items.

The performance was without one of its founding members: Guitarist Andy Taylor left the group late last month.

Bassist Josh Taylor likened the split to a divorce. He said, “There were many strong differences of feeling within the band for some time now.”

However, he said, Taylor’s departure has been “empowering, quite freeing” for Duran Duran.

“We’ve been playing over the last few weeks around Europe and in the States, and we’re just putting it into the music,” he said.

LONDON (AP) – Organized religion fuels anti-gay discrimination and other forms of bias, pop star Elton John said.

“I think religion has always tried to turn hatred toward gay people,” John said in the Observer newspaper’s Music Monthly Magazine in an interview published Saturday. “Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays.”

“But there are so many people I know who are gay and love their religion,” said the singer, who exchanged vows in December in a civil union ceremony with David Furnish. “From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organized religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings, and it’s not really compassionate.”

John also criticized religious leaders for failing to do anything about conflicts around the world.

“Why aren’t they having a conclave? Why aren’t they coming together?”

John said those in his own field have been similarly lax.

“It’s like the peace movement in the ’60s. Musicians got through to people by getting out there and doing peace concerts, but we don’t seem to do them any more,” he said. “If John Lennon were alive today, he’d be leading it with a vengeance.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Bidders looking for a piece of the “King of Cool” shelled out six figures for motorcycles and paid more than $70,000 for one pricey pair of shades in an auction of items that once belonged to actor Steve McQueen.

Cars, trucks, motorcycles and memorabilia from McQueen’s widow Barbara and other collectors were put up for sale by Bonhams and Butterfields at the Petersen Automotive Museum on Saturday. The entire auction brought in $2.9 million.

A 1937 Crocker “Hemi-head” V-Twin motorcycle brought in $276,500, the biggest price of the day and a world record for a Crocker motorcycle, said auction house spokesman Levi Morgan. A 1934 Indian Sport Scout went for $177,500, and a 1920 Indian Powerplus Daytona brought in $150,000.

One anonymous bidder paid $70,200 for Persol sunglasses McQueen is believed to have worn as he played a dapper thief in the opening scenes of 1968’s “The Thomas Crown Affair.” A Rolls Royce Silver Shadow from the same movie brought in exactly the same price.

The winning bidders included private collectors in France, Great Britain and the United States, and the Petersen museum itself bought several items, Morgan said.

McQueen, who died in 1980 at age 50, was known nearly as much for his love of vehicles as for his acting. His most famous movie moments include a mad motorcycle dash in “The Great Escape,” and a car chase through the streets of San Francisco in “Bullitt.”

HONOLULU (AP) – Having starred in several TV series and films about samurai, Ken Watanabe understands sacrifice, honor and fierce battles to the death. So playing a Japanese general in a film about the bloody Battle of Iwo Jima would appear to be a seamless transition.

Not so, Watanabe says. His role in Clint Eastwood’s World War II epic “Letters From Iwo Jima,” took lots of preparation and research.

The film, scheduled for release Dec. 9 in Japan and early next year in the United States, is a companion to Eastwood’s current Iwo Jima film, “Flags of Our Father.” “Letters,” though, is told from the perspective of Japanese soldiers defending the island.

Watanabe, 47, said many Japanese, including the young actors in the film, weren’t aware of the sentiment of the soldiers decades ago. He read books to study the battle, as well as the culture, attitudes and traditional language of that generation.

While Watanabe was well aware of Eastwood’s abilities, he had concerns about an American directing a film from the Japanese vantage point.

“I was worried before shooting,” Watanabe said in an interview with The Associated Press on Waikiki Beach. “We wanted to explain and express the Japanese feeling 60 years ago. He totally understood. We completely had good chemistry.”

Watanabe plays Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who loses the battle for control of Iwo Jima.

“Letters from Iwo Jima” is Watanabe’s fourth Hollywood film in the past few years. Watanabe also starred in “Last Samurai,” “Batman Begins” and “Memoirs of a Geisha.” In 2004, he was featured as one of People Magazine’s 50 most beautiful people.