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We hear Tiger’s head mistress, Rachel Uchitel, decided to make a little investment with her reported $10 million payout from Mr. Woods: The well-known home wrecker bought a piece of elegant Manhattan real estate!
Rachel Uchitel believes she deserves to be a part of NYC’s most elite homeowners. The former mistress of disgraced golfer Tiger Woods bought herself a little present with the hush money Tiger reportedly gave her. TMZ reports that the Celebrity Rehab cast member purchased a $2 million home on NYC’s famous Park Avenue.

According to the report, Rachel’s new zip code comes with 3 bathrooms, a fireplace, a doorman and “white-glove service.” Supposedly, the homeowners association wasn’t thrilled with their new tenant, but TMZ says the entire deal was “pretty easy.” But more shocking than Rachel’s new digs is the reason she bought the place — she wants to start a family!

This is ridiculous coming from someone who was just on a reality show for D-list celebs suffering from addictions. But now that Elin Nordegren has officially divorced Tiger, we’re guessing Rachel has a shot at Elin’s sloppy seconds.

NEW ORLEANS (Associated Press) - The image of thick crude gushing from a blown-out oil well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico was turned off when a tightly fitting cap was secured on top a month-and-a-half ago.

Engineers weren't expecting that sight again Thursday when they planned to delicately remove the cap as a prelude to raising the massive piece of equipment underneath that failed to prevent the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

But the government wasn't offering a guarantee no more oil would leak. Plans were being made for oil collection vessels to be on standby in case of a problem.

With the cap and failed blowout preventer removed temporarily until another blowout preventer can be installed, a lot will be riding on the stability of a plug that was created when mud and cement were pumped down into the well from the top. Essentially, the pressure exerted downward served to counter the pressure coming up.

But Rice University engineering professor George Hirasaki said there is still uncertainty about whether the cement settled everywhere it needed to in order to keep oil and gas from finding its way up.

"Just because it didn't flow when they tested it doesn't mean the cement displaced all of the oil and gas," Hirasaki said.

That's why many people have felt that finishing a relief well and pumping mud and cement in through the bottom would be the ultimate solution to the crisis, said Hirasaki, who was involved in the oil containment effort in the Bay Marchand field off Louisiana after a rig burned in the early 1970s.

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Notice to celebrities — the time for drugging, and partying it up beyond the max, is OVER!
Take a look around you trainwrecks, and check out who’s landing TV shows, movie roles, product endorsements and oodles of fans — it’s the new Hollywood goody goodies. Kim Kardashian who told Jay Leno “I’ve never been a drinker, I’ve never gotten into drugs,” when she dropped into his Aug. 31st show, is the new Queen of the squecky clean set. And listen you need two hands to list all her buisness ventures besides starring in the reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and executive producing The Spin Crowd, starring PR meisters Jonathan Cheban and Simon Huck

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran on Tuesday sought to distance itself from harsh remarks by a hard-line newspaper, which called France's first lady a "prostitute" for condemning the stoning sentence against an Iranian woman convicted of adultery.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said insulting foreign dignitaries like Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is incorrect and not sanctioned by the government.

The Kayhan daily first called Bruni-Sarkozy a "prostitute" Saturday, repeating its criticism Tuesday with the addition that the French first lady also deserved to die.

In its first public comments on the affair, the French Foreign Ministry said it found the comments unacceptable and had brought the matter up with the Iranians.

"We are making known to Iranian authorities that the insults made by the Kayhan paper and picked up by several Iranian Internet sites regarding several French public personalities including Mrs. Sarkozy are unacceptable. We are passing that message through the normal diplomatic channels," said spokesman Bernard Valero at a briefing Tuesday.

Bruni-Sarkozy raised conservative ire by condemning the stoning sentence against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, which Iran temporarily suspended but did not throw out after an international outcry.

Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, could still face execution by stoning or hanging after a final review of her case.

In its latest edition, Kayhan continued its attack on Bruni-Sarkozy, citing a series of relationships out of wedlock both before and after marrying French President Nicolas Sarkozy that qualified as adultery.

Under the Iranian Islamic law any woman or man can face death if they had sex out of wedlock. Kayhan called her "the Italian prostitute" due to her alleged affairs with several famous figures including Mick Jagger, Kevin Costner and Donald Trump.

Bruni-Sarkozy's condemnation of the stoning sentence comes after about 300 people from rights organizations demonstrated in Paris to urge Iran to lift its death sentence against Ashtiani.

In a new survey released Monday, most respondents said that they do not think Sarah Palin would have the ability to be an effective president.

In the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, conducted Aug. 3-5 by CBS News among 847 adult respondents, 59% responded that they thought Palin could not be an effective president compared to only 26% who said that she could be.

Eighty percent of liberals and 70% of moderates said Palin could not be an effective president. Only 41% of conservatives said that she could be, while 40% said that she could not be. However, somewhat more Republicans said that Palin could be effective - 47% said she could be while 40% said she could not.

While the 2012 election is a long way off and poll numbers are difficult to interpret, in one recent poll of potential 2012 matchups, conducted Aug. 6-9 by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, 43% of registered voters said they would support Palin to 49% for Obama. Other possible presidential candidates, including Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich, performed similarly, although Huckabee and Romney received slightly closer 3 point margins (the poll's margin of error for general elections questions was 4%). The poll showed the same four candidates tightly bunched in the Repulican primary race.

Polls taken since last November have largely shown a public with an unfavorable view of Palin - the current Pollster.com trend estimate has Palin with a 36.4% favorable rating and 52.7% unfavorable.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are taking a closer look at Google Inc.'s plans to buy travel technology company ITA Software Inc. in a $700 million all-cash deal announced last month.

In a blog post on Friday, Google said the Justice Department has asked it for more information about the proposed acquisition, which could position the search giant to compete with popular travel sites such as Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.

ITA Software, a 500-employee company started in 1996 by computer scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provides technology that helps run the reservation systems of several airlines. Google says the acquisition will provide it with tools to help consumers search for flights, compare fares and book tickets.

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A bartender at the Lion’s Den restaurant in Waterford, Mich. confirms a fan’s report that Miley is totally into her new on-screen love interest. But oops – he already has a girlfriend!
Miley Cyrus seems to be totally over her boyfriend of a year, Liam Hemsworth, and ALSO appears to have moved on to yet ANOTHER co-star — Douglas Booth. HollywoodLife.com chatted to a bartender at the Lion’s Den in Waterford, Mich., who corroborated a fan report that Miley and her new on-screen love interest in LOL: Laughing Out Loud were getting cozy this week – three days before Liam announced their break-up!

“It looked like Miley was very interested in [Douglas],” the bartender – who prefers to remain nameless – tells us. “I thought they were boyfriend and girlfriend, they were flirting so much. She was really fawning all over him, acting really girly-girly. For his part, he seemed to be eating up the attention.”

Although the 17-year-old Hannah Montana starlet was very touchy-feely with Douglas, also 17, they weren’t doing anything illicit in the restaurant — after all, they WERE out with fellow LOL stars Ashley Greene and Tanz Watson. “The flirting was very respectful and no, they didn’t [kiss],” the bartender says. “They were among friends and other people in the restaurant – but she WAS falling all over him. ”

The Lion’s Den staffer corroborates an eyewitness report by fan Taylor, who wrote of her August 22 run-in with Miley & co. at the restaurant, “It was really weird, though, she was ALL over the Douglas kid. I wanted to ask her where Liam was but thought that would be a little rude lol.”

Well, not SO rude, given that Liam, 2o, broke the news of his split from Miley August 25; the couple dated for a year after meeting on the set of their tearjerker The Last Song last summer. While it looks like his ex is trying to move on with her hunky British co-star – who happens to have a girlfriend of three years! – Liam himself looks to be just fine. New reports indicate that he had a few hot dates with an older woman named Katy in Huntington Beach, Calif

  first spoke to Rick Steiner more than three months ago -- about two weeks into the Deepwater Horizon disaster -- after a source recommended I talk to him for a story I was writing about the spill as a teachable moment. Steiner is a marine conservationist and activist in Alaska who started studying oil spills when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989, and never stopped.

What Steiner said to me during that first interview was blunt, depressing -- and struck me as having the ring of truth. Little did I know how true.

"Government and industry will habitually understate the volume of the spill and the impact, and they will overstate the effectiveness of the cleanup and their response," he told me at the time. "There's no such thing as an effective response. There's never been an effective response -- ever -- where more than 10 or 20 percent of the oil is ever recovered from the water.

"Most of the oil that goes into the water in a major spill stays there," he said. "And once the oil is in the water, the damage is done."

Steiner was also one of the first scientists to warn that much if not most of BP's oil was remaining underwater, forming giant and potentially deadly toxic plumes.

I thought of Steiner last week, as I sat in a congressional hearing room listening to Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ed Markey question Bill Lehr, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Lehr was one of the authors of an increasingly controversial federal report about the fate of BP's spilled oil that Obama administration officials misleadingly cited as evidence that the "vast majority" of the oil was essentially gone.

Even though Laurence Fishburne is not speaking to his porn star daughter Montana, he is secretly footing her legal bills, TMZ reports.

Laurence has hired Lohan lawyer Shawn Chapman Holley to represent Montana - but not in connection with her sex tape or 2009 prostitution bust.

Holley is reportedly representing Montana in an an ongoing assault with a deadly weapon case. Montana was arrested in February for breaking into the home of her boyfriend's ex, dragging the woman into the bathroom and violently assaulting her.

The next hearing in the battery case is set for Wednesday.

CUERNAVACA, Mexico — The decapitated bodies of four men were hung from a bridge Sunday in this central Mexican city besieged by fighting between two drug lords.

A gang led by kingpin Hector Beltran Leyva took responsibility for the killings in a message left with the bodies, the attorney general's office of Morelos state said in a statement.

The beheaded and mutilated bodies were hung by their feet early Sunday from the bridge in Cuernavaca, a popular weekend getaway for Mexico City residents.

Cuernavaca has become a battleground for control of the Beltran Leyva cartel since its leader, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed there in a December shootout with marines.

Mexican authorities say the cartel split between a faction led by Hector Beltran Leyva, brother of Arturo, and another led by Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a U.S.-born kingpin known as "the Barbie."

The message left with the bodies threatened: "This is what will happen to all those who support the traitor Edgar Valdez Villarreal."

Authorities said the four men had been kidnapped days earlier. The family of one of the men reported the abduction to police.

In western Mexico, police found the body of a U.S. citizen inside a car along the highway between the Pacific resorts of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo.

A report from Guerrero state police said the man was shot to death and had identification indicating he was from Georgia.

The U.S. Embassy could not be reached to confirm the man's identity.

Police said they had no suspects and had not determined a motive.

Guerrero state has been wracked by drug-gang violence, including the strife within the Beltran Leyva cartel. There have also been a series of deadly carjackings this year along highways in the state.

Mexico has seen unprecedented gang violence since President Felipe Calderon stepped up the fight against drug trafficking when he took office in December 2006, deploying thousands of troops and federal police to cartel strongholds.

Since then, more than 28,000 people have been killed in violence tied to Mexico's drug war.

(This version CORRECTS tate where Cuernavaca is located to Morelos instead of state of Mexico, corrects the second family name of `Barbie' to Villarreal instead of Villareal.)