Newsmakers

Net worth uncertain
The New Jersey Nets are the worst team in the NBA. They lost 70 basketball games last year, and won 12. They’ve also had a string of discouraged owners, but the latest, Russian billionaire Mik­hail Prokhorov, has the kind of deep pockets that gives despairing fans hope. “To the fans, whether in New Jersey, Brooklyn or Moscow, I will do everything I can to give you a winning team,” said Prokhorov, who paid US$200 million for 80 per cent of the team. He’s the first owner from outside North America, and, with an estimated worth of US$13.4 billion, probably the richest. Certainly, says the six-foot-seven Prokhorov: “I’ll be the first NBA owner who can dunk.”

Does this make me look fat enough?
Healthy, the magazine for the U.K.-based Holland & Barrett natural products chain, promotes “health and well-being” through fitness, better nutrition and, apparently, a heavy hand on the computer. April’s cover shows Polish model Kamilla Wladyka looking gorgeously robust. In reality, admitted editor Jane Druker, she arrived for the shoot all skin and bones. “She looked beautiful in the face, but really thin and unwell.” Druker told fashion insiders that editors packed as much as 20 kg on Wladyka through computer retouching—a practice becoming as common as digitally subtracting pounds, the Telegraph reported this week. “That girl probably should have been sent home from the shoot,” says Eleni Renton, director of Leni’s Model Management. “They retouched her to make her look healthier. It’s false.”

Abracadabra— he’s a grad
When Jordan Goldklang graduated with his bachelor of magic degree last week from Indiana University, he wore the usual academic robe and the less traditional top hat. Where else would you hide the rabbit? Actually, “the Great Jordini” said the pursuit of magic goes beyond mere tricks and illusions. At least that’s how he convinced professors to let him design the world’s first degree program in magic. His courses included cognitive psychology, performance study, voice, speech, and the history of magic. His grad project was “a huge magic show.” He extracted $10 from audience members, not by magic but by good business sense.

So Miss U.S.A. has a past
Lebanese-born Rima Fakih (Miss Michigan U.S.A.) was crowned Miss U.S.A. on Sunday, an immigrant success story that added a sweet touch to the pageant. She aced the bikini event and opined on issues of the day, supporting both Arizona’s immigration law and health insurance paying for birth control. Judges didn’t ask her thoughts on pole dancing. Oops! Seems she won a Detroit radio station’s Stripper 101 contest in 2007. Photos show her grinding away in shorts and a T-shirt. Video also surfaced of Throbbing Justice, a raunchy short film starring a fully clothed Fakih as a police woman. The pageant is investigating to see if another shoe, or whatever, drops.

The sun won’t come out to-morrow
“Little Orphan Annie” ends her 85-year run as a newspaper comic strip June 14. Fewer than 20 papers are still running the strip, which was a huge hit when it launched during the Depression. “Annie is definitely not dying,” said Steve Tippie, vice-president of licensing for Chicago’s Tribune Media Services. The plucky orphan may resurface in comic books or graphic novels, he said. Then there’s Annie, the oddly upbeat musical. In the strip, Annie endured privation, the (temporary) death of Daddy Warbucks and shifting political alliances. The Depression-era Annie, said Jay Maeder, who co-produced the strip’s final years, was “a terrifying pilgrimage through a loony, dark, paranoid and quite particularly American nightmare.”

That could be you
Montreal race car driver J.C. Cote was running on financial fumes as he approached the upcoming season of the Canadian Touring Car Championship season. “Racing is usually either a young man’s or a rich man’s sport,” said Cote. “At 38, I am neither.” He hit on the idea of augmenting his few large sponsors with a financial appeal on Facebook: for $5 he’ll plaster a sponsor’s picture on his car. So far, more than 50 people have bought face time, some for considerably more than $5. “We get to reach the little guy with a passion for racing, or for seeing his picture whiz by at 230 km/h,” said Cote.

Talk to the fist
A couple in their 20s strolling through an amusement park in the Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz caught the attention of the national religious police, always vigilant for illegal unmarried socializing. The man collapsed when questioned by the member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. But the woman responded with her fists, sending the vice cop to hospital with bruises to his face and body, the Saudi media reported Monday. Expect more resistance from women, said Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist. “People are fed up with these religious police and now they have to pay the price for the humiliation they put people through for years and years.”