TABLE OF CONTENTS

New York's Tribeca festival opens with the premiere of United 93, set on a hijacked plane on 11 September.

Blaine: "New Yorkers are cool about this kind of thing."

Federal Investigation:  Powerful gossips columnist allegedly tried to extort money from a California billionaire

New York Post's Jared Paul Stern: "We know how to destroy people, it's what we do. We do it without creating liability. That's our specialty."

Photo:  Columnist Jared Paul Stern, shown at a fashion show in 2003, is accused of trying to extort money from a billionaire. "We know how to destroy people," Stern said. Read

Phil Spector trial delayed again. New York grapevine told the New York Monthly Herald that the murder trial of US music producer Phil Spector has been postponed for a third time, this time until 16 January. Read

Pop star Howie Day, accused of behaving badly on a flight to Boston last year, was sentenced Wednesday to a year’s probation and ordered to continue alcohol counseling. As part of his plea agreement, the 25-year-old singer must write letters of apology to the crew and passengers who were on the American Airline flight. Day was charged just days before Christmas with interfering with a flight crew after he was allegedly belligerent to the flight crew, attempted to smoke in the bathroom, and kicked the back of other passengers’ seats. Read

Boy band star busted for DUI. Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees faces charges. Nick Lachey’s former band mate Jeff Timmons was busted last weekend for allegedly driving drunk. Read

Brittney Spears is pregnant again. Oops, she did it again. Fading pop star Britney Spears is pregnant for the second time, according to sources. She will reportedly deliver a sibling for seven-month-old Sean Preston in late September or early October, which means her children's birthdays will be almost exactly one year apart. It will be the fourth child for Spears’ husband Kevin Federline, who has two children from a previous relationship. Read

Jay Leno attacked for gay jokes. Tony-winning playwright Jeff Whitty has written an open letter to Jay Leno criticizing him for joking about gays. “I know you know gay people, Mr. Leno.  Are they just jokes to you, to be snickered at behind their backs?,” he wrote to the Tonight Show host. Read

Rabbi Moshe Wiener: MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. BROOKLYN FAVORITE SON. Read

ANGELINA TOPS MOST BEAUTIFUL LIST. She's got that pregnant glow, but it is Angelina Jolie's humanitarian efforts that make her most radiant, according to People magazine. The pillow-lipped actress graces the cover of People's "100 Most Beautiful People" issue, on newsstands. Read

Sharon Stone doesn't mind doing nude scenes.

Photo: Sharon Stone admitted she doesn't mind doing nude scenes in films like her new release, Basic Instinct 2.

Sharon Stone, who returns as the seductive Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct 2, says she has no problem doing a nude scene — if it's right for the role. "It's pretty easy for me to be naked," the 48-year-old actress said.  Read

LIFESTYLE:

Between Sex and Massage: similarities and dissonances. By Marion DS Dreyfus.  A recent study by Stuart Brody of the University of Paisley, UK, indicated pretty conclusively that serious romance had a stress-reduction effect that lasted close to a week, as opposed to self-satisfaction, which did not achieve  50% of the stress reduction of two-person full-on encounters. Though less effective, auto-entertainment was still far better than zero romance, it turned out (total subjects: 24 men, 22 women). Read  

Germany's hookers ready for World Cup. Soccer tourney an expected boon for sex industry. As soccer's best players prepare to square off this summer at the World Cup, businesses across Germany are anticipating a huge windfall with the arrival of an estimated one million fans from around the world. The sex industry is no exception. Just down the street from Berlin's Olympic Stadium, site of the final, stands the city's largest brothel, Artemis -- established in September with an eye on capitalizing on the influx of World Cup visitors. The four-storey, 40-bedroom bordello, which cost the equivalent of $9.1 million Cdn, is decorated with liberal doses of faux animal prints and velvet on beds...Read

FUN ARTICLES:   

USA NEWS:

Graft & Sex Scandals Running Rampant in UN

Photo: Ambassador John Bolton.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton criticizes the United Nations for rampant graft by insiders and sex scandals involving UN peacekeepers.  Read

HOWARD STERN: CHILDREN'S BOOK CHARACTER?! Katharine DeBrecht's latest book, “Help! Mom! Hollywood’s in My Hamper,” features shock jock Stern along with Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise and Oprah as cartoon villains. Read

Arab Intellectual on the Worsening Situation of Christians in the Muslim World. Arab intellectual of Palestinian origin George Kattan discusses the discrimination against Christians in the Arab countries today, describing their deteriorating status and diminishing numbers in comparison with previous eras in the region's history. He warns that the Christian population of the region may vanish as Christians emigrate to the West rather than tolerate the backwardness and tyranny of their home countries. Read

Europe's Response to the Threat of Global Terror. By Jose Maria Aznar, Former Prime Minister of Spain. Read

ADVERTISING YOURSELF. The average person spends an enormous amount of their life consuming it in one form or another, and will spend a significant percentage of that time looking at, listening to or watching advertisements. If you want to use the power of the media, though, you need to know what you're doing otherwise your investment will be a financial disaster. Read

No Jordan Option, by Dr. Aaron Lerner. Before the retreat from the Gaza Strip Ehud Olmert was proudly clueless as to who or what would fill the void. But today, in the aftermath of the rise of Hamas to power, the simplistic "RFTH" (run for the hills) approach is wearing thin. Read

Security - not settlers or settlements - is the main issue, by Dr. Aaron Lerner. It may very well turn out that the Palestinians will unwittingly succeed in undermining the powerful media-political retreat alliance.  But it would be a terrible mistake for retreat opponents to rely on Palestinian stupidity. Read

ON THE CHARITY OF THE AMERICAN RABBI, By Ilil Arbel, PH.D. The worst of the lot was a rabbi who did answer. He came to the man’s home, and saw that indeed he had sunk into dire poverty. The rabbi had to sit on a suitcase because the man had no chairs and no bed. He listened to the story and said to the man, “We must pray together, we must remove the curse that has come upon you. Read

Chinese-Saudi Cooperation: Oil but also Missiles. By Simon Henderson . On April 22, two days after a reportedly unproductive meeting with President George W. Bush in Washington, President Hu Jintao of China will arrive in Saudi Arabia. Relations between the two countries are an increasingly important part of world diplomacy. Read

Cruise's delight at baby's birth

Matt LeBlanc has filed for divorce from his wife, citing irreconcilable differences, but his publicist says the two remain "friends." The former Friends TV star filed papers in Superior Court on Thursday to dissolve his three-year marriage to his wife, Melissa LeBlanc. The couple separated Jan. 1. Read

FINDING THE BEST CREAM. So many creams, so many promises. But that certainly would not stop Quebec cosmetics doyenne Lise Watier from adding two new products to the anti-aging arsenal. "None like this," Watier said at a breakfast conference to introduce Lift & Firm. " Read

BEST MAKEUP SECRETS. Had a good look inside your makeup bag lately? It's probably pretty scary in there. Products past their best-before date. Mascaras seething with bacteria. Lipsticks gone bad and powdered blushes turning rancid. It's enough to make going bare-faced seem like a viable option. Read

NEW YORK'S DIVAS. A bouquet of singers from New York. A lovely and colorful choice of Divas with diverse and complex visions of their world, their crafts, their music, their lyrics, the light and the shadow that inhabit and create their musical world. By Maximillien de Lafayette.  Read

Photos from L to R: 1. Carol Sloane. #2. Laurie Krauz. #3. Audrey Silver. #4. Paulette Attie. #5. Hilary Kole. #6. Mercedes Hall.

27th Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. Read

MUSIC

ARTS:

Daniel Iliescu in Black and White. By Maximillien de Lafayette.  Creating a whole universe with a few black and white strokes is a daring esthetical task. Zen masters did it on parchments and bamboos.  It was the sublime and the spiritual which came to life through the lines and elegant curves of the Japanese Senseis and enlightened Chan masters. Today, in New York city, there is an abstract artist who produced similar imagery and challenging forms via a different medium. He did not use bamboos, nor chanted to evoke the divine muse. He just did it with ink, juxtaposition of images, frames and repros in negative. Et voila, a superb world of light and darkness bursted on his laminated and glossy hard stock. Read

A Work in Progress: An Evening with James Mangold. The public is invited to join the museum for A Work In Progress: An Evening with James Mangold, the fifth annual film benefit celebrating a distinctive directorial voice in cinema. This year’s event also marks the Department of Film and Media's acquisition of James Mangold’s feature films: Heavy (1995), Cop Land (1997), Girl, Interrupted (1999), Kate and Leopold (2001), Identity (2003), and the Oscar-nominated Walk the Line (2005). Read

Against the Grain: Contemporary Art from the Edward R. Broida Collection.  This exhibition includes more than one hundred paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints selected from Edward R. Broida’s recent gift to the Museum of 175 works of art. Dating from the 1960s through the present, works by thirty-eight European and American artists are on view. Read

Douglas Gordon: Timeline. At the MOMA: Douglas Gordon (Scottish, b. 1966) visualizes, pictures, and "sculpts" time in many of his works. In 1993, Gordon presented a version of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho, projected onto a translucent screen and slowed down to a duration of twenty-four hours. Read