(AP) Brad Pitt is accustomed to stopping passersby in their tracks. The Hollywood heartthrob’s next job is slowing traffic in Siberia _ or so Russian traffic police hope.
A Russian newspaper reports that cardboard cutouts of Pitt dressed as a traffic cop have been placed by the most dangerous intersections in the city of Omsk.
It’s the latest move by authorities in their endless battle against speeding. Traffic accidents in Russia are among the highest in Europe.
The campaign seems to be working. Omsk officials say accidents are down as star-struck drivers ease off the gas to gaze at the unusual image.
The paper, Argumenty i Fakty, quotes Dmitry Ziryanov, a local official who came up with the idea as saying Pitt is “kind of like a colleague for us.”
(CBS/AP) The controversial Miss California has been fired from her position by the pageant’s grand poobah Donald Trump.
Trump issued a statement Wednesday saying he asked Carrie Prejean to leave for failing to honor her commitments as Miss California USA.
Pageant officials say Tami Farrell, the first runner-up to Prejean in the Miss California USA competition, will take over those responsibilities.
Prejean created controversy during the Miss USA competition, where she was first runner-up, when she answered a judge’s question about gay marriage by saying marriage should be reserved for men and women.
Shanna Moakler, herself a former Miss USA, resigned as co-executive director of the Miss California pageant amid the controversy.
“I think she’s a young girl, and I think she was thrown into the spotlight (after the Miss USA pageant), ” Moakler told The Early Show last month. “I think she was not prepared. I think a lot of organizations latched onto her. They exploited her. They didn’t prepare her. I think, you know, she’s very honest when she says she never expected this.
“But at the same time, I think it’s wrong to start screaming that you’re being persecuted and then you go and align yourself with organizations like NOM that are particularly — I consider them hate groups. (NOM is) the National Organization for Marriage,” which opposes same-sex marriage
(AP) Bret Michaels performed at the Tony Awards, and all he got was a nose fracture and a busted lip.
According to Michaels’ spokeswoman, the rock singer had X-rays taken after getting clocked in the head by a descending set piece at Sunday’s Radio City Music Hall ceremony.
Publicist Joann Mignano says Michaels, who performed with his 1980s hair-metal band Poison, fractured his nose and had to get three stitches in his lip. She says he was getting a CAT scan on Monday as a precaution, as he’s had a past neck injury. Although he’s “pretty bruised up,” Mignano says, Michaels was in good spirits. He wiped off blood with a towel and laughed backstage when host Neil Patrick Harris joked that the singer “gave head banging a whole new meaning.”
