Morning Briefing:
And baby makes three: Angelina Jolie may not be pregnant, but it turns out that she is with child nonetheless. The actress has adopted a little sister for her 3-year-old adopted son, Maddox: an Ethiopian girl, less than a year old, the orphan of parents who died of AIDS. She's planning to name the child Zahara Marley Jolie, and traveled to Ethiopia with Brad Pitt to finalize things last week. The adoption, she tells People magazine, is due to be completed today. (People via N.Y. Post and BBC News)
The death of Dumbeldore? The British bookmaker Ladbroke's has stopped taking bets on which character will die in the forthcoming "Harry Potter" book after a startlingly large number of bettors -- particularly bettors hailing from the area where the book's U.K. printers are located -- started putting money on Dumbledore. The book is due out July 16. (N.Y. Daily News)
Get your Feed Lindsay T-shirts: The FreeKatie Web site has company: FeedLindsay.com, a Web site with the stated goal of getting the increasingly skinny teen actress to put a little meat back on her bones. "Somewhere between all the underage drinking and filming her new movie, Lindsay forgot to eat!" notes the site. "We urge you, Lindsay, to please, pick up a sandwich and eat it, or ice cream, or any food that might put those oh so cute pounds back on," it begs in a petition the site founders hope will gather 10,000 signatures. And they've almost reached their goal. As of press time, 8,987 people had signed the petition. (FeedLindsay.com)
Martha, Martha, Martha: Martha Stewart has given an interview to Vanity Fair. Highlights? She says she despises the "hideous" electronic ankle bracelet she must wear during her time on house arrest: "No matter what they say, there's no getting used to it, because it hurts. It irritates you," Stewart says. "I know how to get it off. I watched them put it on. You can figure out how to get it off. ... It's on the Internet. I looked it up." Compared to house arrest, she tells the magazine, life in prison was a cakewalk: "It was by far the least bad part of the last three years," she says, adding that her friends in the clink called her "M.Diddy" and continue to stay in contact with her. "They all miss me, which is nice," she adds. And they're apparently still with her, too. She named her new dog after one of them. But don't get too misted up about the canine-naming honors: Francesca was "this funny, odd-looking lady with no hair ... My feisty little dog reminds me of her, so I named her Francesca, too." Oh, and one other thing: Stewart has reiterated her intention to eschew Donald Trump's trademark phrase on her version of "The Apprentice." "I would never say, 'You're fired,'" she contends. "We are trying to come up with other ways to say it. For instance, if someone is from Idaho, I could say 'You're back in Boise for apple-picking time.'" (Vanity Fair via N.Y. Daily News and N.Y. Post)
"Shut her trap": Britney Spears' press rep is apparently as sweet and soft-spoken as her famous client. Asked to comment on a New York doctor's assessment that the pregnant pop singer is putting her fetus at risk by eating too much fast food, inhaling husband Kevin Federline's second-hand smoke and indulging in too much sex (the doctor saw fit to issue a press release suggesting that Spears go on "'pelvic rest,' which may include full-time bed rest and no sex"), Spears' flack, Leslie Sloane Zelnik, sputtered, "No one asked for her opinion ... This doctor should mind her own business, shut her trap and get a life." Very delicately put. (Lloyd Grove's Lowdown)
Also: The wrongful death suit brought by Biggie Smalls' family may end in a mistrial following the revelation that a file and two tapes implicating a rogue officer in the rapper's murder were kept hidden for years in an L.A. detective's "middle desk drawer." (N.Y. Daily News, BBC News) ... Madonna reportedly requested that she be "kept as far away ... as possible" from Mariah Carey during the Live 8 festivities in London over the weekend. (Page Six) ... Quentin Tarantino has been seen "holding hands and acting like a couple" with Shar Jackson, the mother of Kevin "Mr. Britney Spears" Federline's two children. (Us Weekly via Page Six) ... The rumors continue to fly that Demi Moore is pregnant, despite her repeated denials. One guy who spotted her taking in a movie with Ashton Kutcher in Los Angeles had her pegged at "about five or six months" along. (Page Six) ... eBay is taking steps to prevent the illegal sale of pirated Live 8 DVDs on its site. (Reuters) ... Tommy Lee Jones has joined the cast of the forthcoming movie based on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion," directed by Robert Altman. (The Hollywood Reporter) ... McDonald's is in talks with Sean "Puffy/P.Diddy" Combs, Russell Simmons and Tommy Hilfiger about redesigning the company's employee uniforms, in, as AdAge puts it, an attempt "to change its image from a fat purveyor to phat icon." (AdAge.com)
Money Quote:
Babyshambles frontman -- and Kate Moss squeeze -- Pete Doherty insisting that Bob Geldof's 16-year-old daughter, not drugs, were to blame for his strange, slurred performance at Live 8: "I wasn't lost for words and I wasn't out of it on drugs. Just before I went on stage, Peaches squeezed my bum hard and whispered something rather suggestive to me. It left me in such shock, I didn't know where I was. Bob Geldof has organised this amazing global event, I was facing 210,000 people, the cameras are rolling, and f**king Elton John is duetting with me. And Bob's daughter has secretly made a pass at me. It's all I can think about. It did my head in. I didn't think Bob would be very happy." (Ireland Online)
Turn On:
On Wednesday night, the WB airs the season finale of "Beauty and the Geek" (8 p.m. EDT), in which one odd couple will snag the $250,000 prize. And FX airs the next installment of Morgan Spurlock's series "30 Days" (10 p.m. EDT); in this episode, a homophobic straight guy goes to San Francisco to spend a month living with a gay man.
-- Amy Reiter
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