When Zac Efron dropped a Magnum condom at The Lorax premiere, you’d just assume it was a simple mistake at best or a deliberate message to the ladies at worst. Except if you’re The National Enquirer, you immediately assume it’s a clever stunt to woo his two decades older The Paperboy co-star Nicole Kidman away from Keith Urban which makes all the sense in the world. I don’t know how we missed it. Via Gossip Cop:

“He thinks she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on,” reveals a so-called “insider,” adding, “Zac said if Nicole wasn’t married, he’d put the moves on her hard.”
…
The Enquirer alleges that Efron’s recent red carpet miscue was all part of a plan to “impress” Kidman.
Efron dropped the “gold magnum condom – which is used by well-endowed men” because, as the magazine’s source explains, “He knew reports of the incident would get back to her.”
“He wanted to let her know what kind of man he really is,” says the Enquirer insider. CLICK HERE

In Mumbai the rich build helipads atop their houses, the poor beg not just for food but also water. The condominiums of the wealthy tower above the tarp roofs of the poor so that when they turn to the heavens in prayer they see instead the rich at play. Obvious disparity is a defining feature of Mumbai, and the city's survival and relative harmony despite this is what makes it so fascinating to writers.

I don't recall when I slipped from writing about the mainstream to writing only of the margins. But one evening a few years ago I found myself accompanying a young hijra, an Indian transgender, to the home of her guru for a story I was reporting. I was then invited to attend a brothel madam's birthday party in the red light district. Thereafter it seemed only natural that when the brothel workers went on pilgrimage to a shrine high up in the hills outside Mumbai, that they would invite me along.

With every interview, I learnt a little more of the intimate hardships of poverty. Through every shared experience I saw how great a struggle it was for an already marginalized person to survive in a city with eyes only for the prize of power and wealth. For the courage they displayed, everyone I met deserved to have his or her story told. Then in 2005 I was introduced to a girl called Leela who didn't just have a story, but who became part of a story that captivated India.

Leela was 19, and a bar dancer. Every night she danced fully clothed to Bollywood music in a seedy little bar called Night Lovers. The more energetic and calculated her dancing, the more likely it was that her customers, the men who'd come to watch her, would reward her. If they liked what they saw, they flung money at her. On a good night Leela earned the equivalent of $50. Customers also showed their appreciation with gifts of perfume and offers of money for sex.

Leela was one of 75,000 women who danced in bars. And at the time there were 1,500 such bars in Mumbai. Their aesthetic was a curious blend of a 1970s nightclub and a Bollywood set. But even among the crowd, Leela stood out. Most bar dancers were illiterate. Leela read novels. She had a wicked sense of humor. And she knew without a doubt that she deserved better than her customers. Through hundreds of hours of interviews I found that despite the physical hardship and routine degradation at the hands of customers and cops, Leela's life, relative to the alternative of the street or back in the village was under her own control, and, as far as she was concerned, a happy one.

In the summer of 2005, the local government decided to ban dancing in bars. The decision was a bald attempt to capture the middle class vote, and cost thousands of women their livelihood. Innumerable bar owners, waiters, bouncers, even taxi drivers and tailors who'd earned money from the bars also suffered losses.

Leela's life, which I chronicle in my book Beautiful Thing, was now out of her control. Like the Bollywood films to whose music she danced, it was chaos in the extreme. READ MORE

"Punk'd" is back, and its causing some series drama for its Hollywood targets. In this sneak-peek of the wedding-crashing premiere, Justin Bieber -- who is celebrating his 18th birthday -- punks his good friend, pop superstar Taylor Swift, and from the look on her shocked face, you'd think she won an award.

This season, Ashton Kutcher is passing the torch to a different celebrity host each week, including Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Kellan Lutz, Hayden Panettiere, Bam Margera and “Punk’d” alum Dax Shepard, among many others, who will punk their unsuspecting famous friends, including Khloe Kardashian Odom, “Teen Wolf’s” Tyler Posey, Demi Lovato, and more.

This just in: President Obama will be re-elected president in 2012.

At least, that's what the newly discovered Academy Awards/Golden Globes Rule suggests.

With only two exceptions over the past 50 years, a Democrat has won the White House when the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Drama) and the Oscar for Best Picture have not gone to the same film. When the same picture takes both honors, a Republican wins.

This year, "The Descendants" won Best Motion Picture (Drama) at the Globes, and "The Artist" won Oscar's Best Picture. (Full disclosure: "The Artist" also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical).)

CNN's OutFront blog spotted the pattern (and yes, even they float the question of whether or not they have too much time on their hands), and the details are pretty intriguing. Of the two times the rule failed to hold true, one can be somewhat easily explained away:

In 1976, when "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" won both awards, things went crazy, and Gerald Ford failed to win.

But as Ford was never actually elected as president or vice president in the first place, there is an argument to be made he was never a true incumbent.

The other, CNN notes, was when the filmic adaptation of Steinbeck's "East of Eden" won the Golden Globe but failed to capture the Oscar. Steinbeck himself was fiercely political and published a long memo outlining a plan that he hoped would keep Eisenhower from a second term.

Every other election cycle, the award shows have "predicted" the party of the next president. Reagan won his second term the year that "Terms of Endearment" won both honors, and Bill Clinton won in 1996 when "Braveheart" and "Sense and Sensibility" split the statuettes.

The Conservative Party is reviewing tapes of every call made by the Responsive Marketing Group call centre in Thunder Bay, Ont., in the last election before Elections Canada investigators arrive next week, CBC News has learned.

Investigators are planning to interview the centre's staff, which the Conservative Party hired to make phone calls to identify and rally supporters in the 2011 federal election.

The news comes on a day when Conservative MPs' counterattack backfired after they accused the Liberals of being behind mysterious election calls — but mixed up two similarly named call companies, naming the wrong one as the smoking gun.

After a week of denials over the role the Conservative Party and a campaign team played in phone calls directing voters to the wrong polling station, and opposition party allegations over harassing calls in other ridings, Prime Minister Stephen Harper pushed back in question period.

The Liberals, Harper said in the House, have said people got misleading phone calls from numbers in the United States. But when two of his MPs tried to offer more details, they named a U.S.-based company that the Liberals have never used.

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said Harper was smearing thousands of Canadians complaining about the calls.

"The prime minister and his colleagues have remarkable ability to turn themselves into victims," Rae said.

"The prime minister cannot deny the fact that two of the companies that are involved with respect to [campaign] activities are now under serious investigation. Nor can he deny the fact that there is an RCMP investigation ongoing with respect to what happened in Guelph."

Elections Canada is investigating automated robocalls in Guelph, Ont., that tried to send voters to the wrong polling station on election day.

Opposition MPs say they have reports of robocalls or strange, harassing live calls from more than 45 ridings in the lead-up to the May 2, 2011, election. They allege the Conservative campaigns made the rude calls, claiming to be the Liberals, in an attempt to make the Liberal campaigns look bad. Harper says the opposition parties didn't report the calls at the time and are acting like sore losers.

This just in: President Obama will be re-elected president in 2012.

At least, that's what the newly discovered Academy Awards/Golden Globes Rule suggests.

With only two exceptions over the past 50 years, a Democrat has won the White House when the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Drama) and the Oscar for Best Picture have not gone to the same film. When the same picture takes both honors, a Republican wins.

This year, "The Descendants" won Best Motion Picture (Drama) at the Globes, and "The Artist" won Oscar's Best Picture. (Full disclosure: "The Artist" also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical).)

CNN's OutFront blog spotted the pattern (and yes, even they float the question of whether or not they have too much time on their hands), and the details are pretty intriguing. Of the two times the rule failed to hold true, one can be somewhat easily explained away:

In 1976, when "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" won both awards, things went crazy, and Gerald Ford failed to win.

But as Ford was never actually elected as president or vice president in the first place, there is an argument to be made he was never a true incumbent.

The other, CNN notes, was when the filmic adaptation of Steinbeck's "East of Eden" won the Golden Globe but failed to capture the Oscar. Steinbeck himself was fiercely political and published a long memo outlining a plan that he hoped would keep Eisenhower from a second term.

Every other election cycle, the award shows have "predicted" the party of the next president. Reagan won his second term the year that "Terms of Endearment" won both honors, and Bill Clinton won in 1996 when "Braveheart" and "Sense and Sensibility" split the statuettes.

This news, if you can call it that, comes amid signs that Hollywood isn't as Obama-mad as it used to be. Four years after the likes of Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney and Halle Berry effusively praised the "Yes We Can" candidate, the relationship appears to have cooled considerably.

Could they be fighting over who gets to wear the prettiest bra? Or who gets the most close-ups and magazine covers? Whatever anger they're channeling, a cat fight has never looked as glamorous as these pictures of Adriana Lima and Doutzen Kroes.

The Victoria's Secret models are pitted against one another in the latest edition of V Magazine.

In pictures taken by photographer Mario Testino, the women go to battle in fish nets, heels... and not much else.

The magazine said the sport theme for their spring edition was a natural choice with the London 2012 Olympics taking place this summer.

"We wanted to pay homage to these incredible icons past and present with our own Fashion Olympics. The talents who grace these pages face challenges, obstacles, victory, and defeat in an open forum almost every day," they state

Armed with a new 10-page report he commissioned, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday he suspects the birth certificate President Obama released last year is a “computer-generated forgery” — and also raised questions about the authenticity of the president’s selective service registration card.

In an extensive — and at times combative — press conference in Phoenix, Sheriff Arpaio repeatedly said he is not questioning the president’s legal status under the Constitution nor alleging fraud on Mr. Obama’s part, but did say there is evidence crimes have been committed by someone and his investigation continues.

“Based on all of the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic,” Sheriff Arpaio said. “My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in paper format as claimed by the White House.” CLICK HERE

The 38-year-old supermodel posed topless on the cover of Another Man magazine, showing off her youthful chest.

Kate 'wore' an Alexander McQueen design for the shoot, for a limited edition of the publication coinciding with the start of Paris Fashion Week.

Kate, who was spotted out and about in London yesterday, appears to have recovered from a nerve disorder that rendered her 'temporarily paralysed', according to friends.

She was diagnosed with the condition last weekend after returning from Paris, where she woke up at the Ritz hotel unable to move her right arm and hand.

Although she will make a full recovery, the illness is a blow for Kate who is about to move into her £7.25million new home in Highgate, North London, with husband Jamie Hince.

The event, which was held at the Kensington Roof Gardens in west London, quickly turned into a battle between the female stars as the most tanned reality TV personalities fought it out for the most revealing dress competition.

Sam Faiers covered all bases by wearing a dress that was both short in length and low cut in the chest area.

The 22-year-old may have been dressed more demure than her sister but she may have over done it with the fake tan on her legs.

Jessica Wright sent pulses racing as she turned up in a black sheer dress that left little to the imagination.

The 21-year-old brunette looked slightly elegant in her short dress which she teamed with black peep toe heels, but, on closer inspection it looks like she forgot a vital piece of her wardrobe.

Newcomer Billi Mucklow opted for a purple sequined dress which featured black under netting, but the halterneck, teamed with pink lipstick and big earrings, made the 24-year-old look like a little bit like EastEnders' Pat Butcher.

Her boyfriend Tom Kilbey looked uncomfortable in front of the camera and he wore a white Vivienne Westwood shirt with a silver blazer.