BREAKING NEWS

US journalist faces sexual harassment furor over memoir

LOS ANGELES, Oct 28- A Rolling Stone journalist and author abruptly canceled his remarks at a humanities festival on Saturday after backlash over a memoir he published in 2000, which critics say gleefully recounts his sexual harassment of female employees.
Matt Taibbi, author of a new book about the death of a 43-year-old black man at the hands of the New York City Police Department, would not make a scheduled appearance for the Chicago Humanities Festival at the Ace Hotel, the hotel said. No reason was given and festival organizers could not be reached for comment.
Taibbi, who was still scheduled to speak at a separate festival event in nearby Evanston on Saturday, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 47-year-old Taibbi has come under fire in recent days after an NPR journalist asked him during an interview about the memoir, "The Exile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia," which chronicles his time as the editor of an English language newspaper in Russia.
The book, co-written by Taibbi and another editor at the paper, Mark Ames, contains passages seemingly detailing the two men's mistreatment, sexual harassment and even assaults on their female staff and other young women.
Taibbi earlier this week posted a lengthy apology on Facebook, saying that "The Exile" was fictional and intended as a "giant satire" of Americans living in Russia.