Latest Entertainment & Social news Today- 1st June 2008

OBAMA QUITS CHICAGO CHURCH AFTER LONG CONTROVERSY:

Barack Obama said Saturday he has resigned his 20-year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago "with some sadness" in the aftermath of inflammatory remarks by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and more recent fiery remarks at the church by a visiting priest.

"This is not a decision I come to lightly ... and it is one I make with some sadness," Obama said at a news conference after campaign officials released a letter of resignation he sent to the church on Friday.

"I'm not denouncing the church and I'm not interested in people who want me to denounce the church," he said, adding that the new pastor at Trinity and "the church have been suffering from the attention my campaign has focused on them."

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS FIRE ON HISTORIC BACK LOT:

A large fire raged on a back lot at Universal Studios on Sunday, devouring several movie sets and the theme park's King Kong attraction, officials said.

The King Kong exhibit is a stop on the studio's tram tour where the giant ape bellows at passengers and artificial banana scent fills the area, studio spokesman Eliot Sekuler said.

Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Daryl Jacobs said at least one building had burned and as many as three blocks of movie facades were destroyed.

LBN-NOTICED:

***Justin Timberlake and girlfriend Jessica Biel in an hours-long "heavy make-out session" at Set in Miami

***Michael ("Kramer") Richards strolling Columbus Avenue in a bright floral shirt with a camera around his neck.

***Mariel Hemingway, Marilu Henner, Drew Pinksky, director John Landis, Heather Thomas, attorney Gloria Allred, writer Stanley Bing all at the large Harper Collins Book Expo party held at the 20th Century Fox lot last night.

LBN-BUSINESS INSIDER:

***The Bunny Ranch, Nevada's famed cathouse, is fighting inflation by offering its jet-setting customers a $15 rebate to defray new baggage fees imposed by American Airlines.

***Two years in, the merger of Disney and Pixar is notable for how well the two companies have made it work.

LBN-SNAP:...Is that a hickey on Amy Winehouse's neck??

ALMOST GONE:

Just over 50 years ago, Iraq's Jews numbered more than 130,000, but only seven or eight still remain, groups say.

LBN-COMMENTARY BY DOUG GILES:

Biblical Christianity, lived and worked out in real time, has always been a life-stoking blessing in whatever land it took root.

LBN MISSION:

To comfort the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Seven days a week but never weakly.

LBN-MEDIA INSIDER:

***Sallie Hofmeister is the new business editor at the Los Angeles Times, reporting to the managing editor.

LBN-OVERHEARD:

***Frank Sinatra wasn't the type to forgive and forget.

The Chairman of the Board bristled at a Catholic priest who wrote to him suggesting the jailed kidnappers of his son, Frank Sinatra Jr., were sorry for their crimes and deserved a break.

In a six-page letter to Federal Bureau of Prisons Chaplain Roger Schmit written in 1964, Ol' Blue Eyes rages:

"You have had no prior relationship to the Sinatra family . . .

It is presumptuous for you to ask us to forgive them.

" He rips the kidnappers' claims that young Sinatra was in on the abduction, and "up to this time I have remained silent . . . [about] the harm done to my son by the claim of 'hoax,' but your letter, written in the name of God, has caused me to break that silence." T

he typewritten missive, signed by Sinatra, is for sale at http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?

== for $36,000.

***Don't count on Susan Sarandon to keep her word and leave the country if John McCain becomes president.

Such threats are almost never carried out.

Eight years ago, Barbra Streisand, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Alec Baldwin, and the late director Robert Altman all threatened to leave the US if George W. Bush got elected.

None did.

Four years ago, Robert Redford said he'd leave the country if Bush got re-elected.

He's still in Utah.

***Angry Alec Baldwin trashed friends and strangers equally at a party to launch his new book on divorce Friday night.

At a private bash to hype the book "A Promise to Ourselves," the 50-year-old "30 Rock" star first promised the book was not meant to "bury" ex-wife Kim Basinger - then he proceeded to rake her over the coals.

"My ex-wife reaches an almost sexual level of satisfaction when she's in a room full of high-priced lawyers," he said of Basinger, with whom he has battled since their 2001 divorce over the custody of their daughter, Ireland. Baldwin added, "There are serious repercussions for children living in a fatherless home.

I won't name names - Lindsay Lohan!"

***The star of "Two and a Half Men" has moved on to marriage No. 3. Charlie Sheen tied the knot with fiancée Brooke Mueller Friday night, said publicist Stan Rosenfield, who declined to give more details.

DID YOU KNOW?

***Hair is made from the same substance as fingernails.

***Although the outsides of a bone are hard, they are generally light and soft inside and are about 75% water.

***The human brain has about 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) neurons.

***Ketchup was once used as a medicine in the United States.

In the 1830s it was sold as Dr. Miles Compound Extract of Tomato.

***People generally read 25% slower from a computer screen compared to paper.

LBN-QUOTE:

"Somewhere in the waning hours of this interminable primary, I found myself channeling Barack Obama as he began a long overdue and eagerly anticipated conversation ... on gender."

--Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe associate editor and Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated columnist

LBN-HISTORY: On June 1, 1968, author-lecturer Helen Keller, who earned a college degree despite being blind and deaf most of her life, died in Westport, Conn.

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