Ashanti
Ashanti cancelled a performance headlining a Divas concert in Johannesburg, South Africa, Saturday after a drunken teen driver killed her 20-year-old cousin and personal assistant.
Police said that Quinshae Snead, known as Quin, was en route to Ashanti's hotel on an errand before Saturday's concert when the car she was riding in was rear-ended.
“Her body was thrown into the oncoming lane, where it was hit by another vehicle,” said West Rand police spokesperson Solomon Sibiya. The accident was caused by a 17-year-old unlicensed driver who had stolen his mother's car, said Johannesburg metro police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar.
"He was also under the influence of liquor," Minnaar told the South African Press Association. The teen was arrested for drunk driving and hospitalized.
The driver of the car with Snead also was injured and taken to the hospital. Concert promoter Morris Roda told the South African press that Ashanti, 25 (real name: Ashanti Douglas), cried for most of Sunday.
Reports on Monday morning say that the singer will escort Snead's body back home to the U.S. A rep for Ashanti said in a release on Monday, "Ashanti and the Douglas family would like to thank Morris Roda, (the) South African government, South African Airlines, Melrose Arch Hotel and the South African fans for the their support and assistance in Johannesburg during this time. "The family would also ask you keep Quin and her family and friends in your thoughts and prayers."
Tribute:
This is a very sad thing to happen. Life is short we are not promised tomorrow. Live your life like it's your last. Dance like there's no tomorrow. I am sorry for such a loss.... drinking and driving we all doesn't mix. Let's take precautions to make sure this doesn't happen to another young life. Our thoughts and Prayers go out to Ashanti and her family. Angelina Star
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Tom: 'We're Just Scientologists'
Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise
Love and marriage are just two of the topics Tom Cruise touches upon with Diane Sawyer in his interview Friday night on ABC's Primetime.
But when it comes down to his 27-year-old pregnant fiancée, the 43-year-old star says, according to excerpts from the Q&A on the ABC Web site: "We're just a couple that are gonna have a baby and very excited about it, about this new life."
The child, which is due imminently – Cruise has owned up to knowing the sex but has not revealed it – will not have a Catholic baptism, despite Holmes's having been raised a Catholic, says Cruise. Instead, like him, the baby and new mother will be Scientologists.
"No," Cruise tells Sawyer. "I mean, you can be Catholic and be a Scientologist. You can be Jewish and be a Scientologist. But we're just Scientologists." Cruise dismisses reports that Holmes's religious parents, Martin and Kathleen Holmes of Ohio, are annoyed by their daughter's shift in faith.
Instead, he says, he's close with "the whole family" and – "absolutely, yes" – they approve of Scientology, which, according to Cruise, provides "tools to help better your life. That's what Scientology is. It helps you to improve your life." As for improving delivery of the baby through the tenets of Scientology, Cruise confirms that Holmes will adhere to Scientology's practice of quiet birth – described by Cruise as a means to "minimize talk and other noise inside the delivery room" and "basically just respecting the mother."
Addressing speculation that such a practice would deny Holmes any pain medication should she require it, Cruise says: "She does what she's gotta do. … If she needs medicine, she needs medicine."
As for what attracted him to Holmes in the first place, Cruise says: "Her smile drives me crazy in a good way. She has this thing that she does with her tongue when she smiles. When she's really laughing when her tongue sticks out … and it's the cutest thing." But "when we're riding motorcycles," he says, "I tell her look, please don't stick your tongue out. If we hit a bump or anything I get a little bit nervous."
He's also charmed by the fact that "she loves cupcakes ... she loves to laugh," he says.
So, why the delay in walking down the aisle? "We were just talking about it last night," says Cruise. "She has this beautiful belly, this glowing woman. … We were walking up to bed, and I just, I can't wait till we get married. I can't wait till I can call and say, 'Hey, you know, put my wife on the phone.' "
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Oprah: I'm Not Hosting a Jen-Vince Wedding
Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer Aniston
Oprah Winfrey on Monday put to rest rumors that she's throwing a lavish $8 million wedding for and Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn.
With the help of Aniston, who called into The Oprah Winfrey Show to set the record straight, Winfrey said that there is no party, let alone a "wedding of the century" as some reports would call it.
Winfrey also denied reports that she's giving the couple a $1-million wedding present.
("It sounds like you're giving me Santa Barbara," Aniston joked to Winfrey of tabloid reports.) And the talk show host said she's not hiring celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma to perform at the alleged nuptials.
"(The rumors) are so unbelievable," said Aniston, adding that she first heard the wedding rumor when she was asked about it earlier this month on the Today show.
"For us," Aniston told Winfrey, "I guess, at a certain point, you have no other choice but to think it's funny." Winfrey, however, said she didn't think it was funny that a news program like Today was reporting such fodder.
Thumbing through a supermarket tabloid that Winfrey said also wrongly reported that she and longtime companion Steadman Graham were splitting, Winfrey referred to a published account that she's helping Aniston hunt for a house near hers.
"I do want you near me," Winfrey told Aniston, "but you can live where you want to live, honey." Yet, is Aniston house hunting?
"No, I have my house," she said. Anything else she wanted to talk about, asked Winfrey. "No wedding, no moves, no no," said Aniston. "I'll keep you posted."
During the Today appearance earlier this month with two of her Friends With Money costars Aniston was asked about the alleged wedding.
"I thought you weren't going to go there," Aniston's costar Catherine Keener snapped at the morning program's entertainment reporter, Jill Rappaport.
Rappaport acknowledged Keener's instinct to protect Aniston, but said she was still curious about the rumors because she herself had never been to an $8 million wedding. "And now you won't be," said Keener, as Aniston remained tight-lipped.
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Eva Longoria: I'll Be with Tony 'Forever'
Parker and Longoria
Eva Longoria is a relationship kind of woman – and says she expects to stay with her beau, San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker "forever." "I'd much rather be in a relationship," the Desperate Housewives star tells PEOPLE.
"There's no way in the world I would rather be single. Tony is too. I've said the only reason Tony and I are going to stay together forever is because we're too lazy to look for someone else."
Longoria, who appears in the upcoming film The Sentinel, also sets the record straight on a recent interview with Allure in which she said of her relationship with Parker, "I'm the teacher, especially about love."
"In the article, I explain it very clearly," she tells PEOPLE. "How I'm the experienced one because I've been married, divorced, I've been in several long-term relationships.
Tony's been in one long-term relationship and he's 23. I'm 31. I don't know where they got 'teacher of sex.' " (Longoria was married to actor Tyler Christopher from 2002 to 2004.) Longoria says she's learned to ignore rumors that she's dating other men, such as pal Jamie Foxx and her Sentinel costar Kiefer Sutherland. "I don't really pay attention to it," she says. "Tony and I are really secure.
Plus, Tony doesn't have a jealous bone in his body. Kiefer is friends with Tony and me. Jamie is friends with Tony and me.
Anybody who's in my life is a friend of mine is also a friend of Tony's." Of having her love life scrutinized, she tells PEOPLE, "It's a shame because you can't be private about your life and you can't be public.
If people say, 'How are you and Tony?' and I say, 'I don't want to talk about my personal life,' they're like 'Trouble in paradise: Eva doesn't speak about it.' Then you talk about it, and they're like: 'Trouble in paradise: Eva speaks out.' You can't win."
Namibia Governor: Jolie to Have Baby There
Angelina Jolie and her kids
A governor in the remote Southern African nation of Namibia says Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are planning to have their baby there and even give the child a local name, because Jolie "loves Namibia."
Samuel Sheefeni Nuuyoma, governor of the Namibian province where Pitt and Jolie have been staying at a tiny beachside lodge, told the Sunday Times of South Africa he had breakfast with the couple on Friday.
Saying he wanted his guests to feel "at home and free," Nuuyoma continued, "Namibia is a country where everyone has the right to freedom of movement, and they must not feel inhibited when they visit this beautiful country of ours."
According to the Associated Press, the Namibian government has made efforts to keep paparazzi away from Pitt, Jolie and children Maddox, 4, and Zahara, 1, by telling journalists entering the country without valid work permits that they could be arrested.
Nuuyoma could not be reached for comment by the AP. As PEOPLE reports in its current issue, Pitt and Jolie visited a local game reserve with their children upon arriving in Namibia.
According to a local source, Jolie "fell in love with the country" when she filmed Beyond Borders there in 2002 and is "here for the birth of the child."
Another source tells PEOPLE that the couple have a plane on constant standby should they change their minds
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Teen Arrested in Natalee Holloway Case
Natalee Holloway
Aruban police made a new arrest this weekend in the nearly year-old case of the disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway.
Authorities have so far said only that the person arrested is 19 and has the initials "G.V.C." In Aruba, when an arrest is announced, officials usually release only a suspect's initials, the Associated Press reports.
But according to the New York Post, the suspect is Geoffrey van Cromvoirt, who works as a beach patroller to prevent crime against tourists.
Holloway, 18, was an honors student from Mountain Brook, Ala., who disappeared May 30 on the final night of a trip to the Dutch Caribbean island. On Monday, a lawyer for Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch teen who'd previously been held in the case, said that his client didn't know the latest person arrested by Aruban authorities.
"My client doesn't know him at all," Joseph Tacopina told the AP. However Tacopina said the suspect was detained because police recovered a T-shirt belonging to him with "relevant forensic information." The lawyer, whose investigators have been in contact with Aruban authorities, did not give any other details.
Holloway's father, Dave, said Sunday he had been told the arrested person's identity but did not recognize the name. "We're hopeful that something will come out of it," he told CNN.
He added that he is still suspicious of Joran van der Sloot and Surinamese brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, who were the last to be seen with Holloway.
On the Today show Monday morning, he said that a recent episode of the Dutch TV version of America's Most Wanted, which aired in Aruba on April 11, helped bring about the new arrest.
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Gena Lee Nolin Has a Boy
Cale Hulse and Gena Lee Nolin
Gena Lee Nolin, who starred as Neely Capshaw on Baywatch, and her hockey player husband, Cale Hulse, have welcomed a son, Hudson Lee Hulse, PEOPLE has learned exclusively.
The actress delivered her son – who was born on April 15 and weighed 8 lbs. 6 oz. – in Scottsdale, Ariz. "Mother and baby are doing well and resting comfortably," says Nolin's rep, Jerry Shandrew.
Nolin, 34, already has an 8-year-old son, Spencer, from her first marriage to video producer Greg Fahlman.
The actress, who also appeared on the TV series Sheena, and Hulse have been married since Sept. 3, 2004, after having met on a blind date set up by a pal of Nolin's.
