Nicky Hilton

Nicky Hilton prefers a simpler life. While Paris Hilton for President is looking for her new BFF on MTV’s new reality show, younger sister Nicky recently was out on the town in Miami, hosting the second night of the re-launch of nightclub Karu & Y in downtown Miami.

How did you get involved in this event?

“I was invited to come down and host it, and I’m a big fan of Miami. Haven’t been here in a while so it was the perfect opportunity.”

What do you like to do when you’re in Miami?

“I love the restaurants. The nightlife’s great. Shopping’s great, the beaches and the hotels. I love it all.”

Any favorite restaurants?

Famous Nick Nolte’s home

The “Tropic Thunder” star suffered smoke inhalation and minor abrasions in the fire, which was caused by an electrical problem, Inspector Sam Padilla, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said.

The fire caused $3 million in damage to the structure and contents of the house but the home was not destroyed, Inspector James Barnes of the fire department said. The flames were confined to the living room.

“Nick Nolte was there apparently with a water hose trying to extinguish the fire himself and of course we came to help him out,” Barnes said.

Nolte’s spokesman, Arnold Robinson, said in a statement the actor was “grateful” to firefighters and police “for their quick response and assistance.”

Matthew Broderick

Matthew Broderick returns to Broadway next spring, The Roundabout Theatre Company production,

directed by David Grindley, will open April 26, 2009, at the American Airlines Theatre,

Todd Haimes, the Roundabout’s artistic director, announced Monday. It will begin preview performances April 10.

Broderick, in his first Broadway appearance since the 2005 revival of “The Odd Couple,” portrays Philip, an insular college professor.

Other casting will be announced.

“The Philanthropist” had a 64-performance run on Broadway in 1971 in a production that featured Alec McCowen, Jane Asher and Victor Spinetti.

James Earl Jones to get SAG life achievement award

Actor James Earl Jones

The award, given annually to the actor who fosters the finest ideals of the acting profession, will be presented to Jones in January when the guild honors the year’s top acting achievements on television and film, SAG said on Thursday.

Jones’ voice is known around the world in roles such as Mufasa, the king in Disney’s “The Lion King”, and in numerous commercials.

He also has a long and distinguished career on Broadway in roles such as boxer Jack Johnson in

“The Great White Hope”, on screen in “Patriot Games” and “Cry the Beloved Country”, and on television, where he played Alex Hayley in “Roots:The Next Generation.”

Ironically, Jones, 77, spent his childhood as a virtual mute because of a severe stutter that he overcame only in high school.

SAG president Alan Rosenberg said Jones was an extraordinary actor whose long and quiet work off camera as an advocate for literacy and the arts “deserves our appreciation.”

Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir PutinRussian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine on Thursday of sending weapons and military personnel to help Georgia during its war with Russia.

The accusation came as Russia announced a memorandum of understanding for handling natural gas sales to Ukraine after Putin met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is locked in a political fight with her nation’s pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko.

The timing of Russia’s statements underlined Moscow’s drive to increase its leverage in the neighboring former Soviet republic of Ukraine.

Without referring to Ukraine’s president by name, Putin suggested Yushchenko authorized weapons supplies to Georgia before and during Russia’s war there in August. He also alleged that Ukrainian military personnel fought on Georgia’s side during the conflict.

Salma Hayek in campaign to wipe out tetanus

Hayek, spokeswoman for the Pampers/UNICEF campaign against tetanus, went to Sierra Leone last week to take part in an vaccination drive against the disease.

For each specially-marked pack of Pampers diapers sold through year-end, Procter & Gamble has pledged to donate a vaccine. UNICEF hopes to wipe out the scourge, blamed for the deaths of 140,000 babies and 30,000 mothers each year, by 2012.

“I had no idea how much it was going to really personally move me … to actually see it in Sierra Leone,” Hayek told a news conference in Geneva.

Sierra Leone is among 50 countries where newborn babies and mothers die of tetanus, which has been eradicated in industrial countries, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Tetanus bacteria breed in soil and can infect babies at the moment of birth in unsanitary conditions, often through the umbilical cord. Death is swift and painful.

“You cannot protect a child at birth against tetanus unless you immunize the mother during the pregnancy or before,” said UNICEF expert Francois Gasse.

Paul McCartney performs for thousands in Tel Aviv

Singing “Give Peace a Chance,” he stopped and let the audience sing the chorus alone. “Here tonight you sang it, you want it,” the 66-year-old rocker said. He dedicated the song to his fellow Beatle, John Lennon, who was killed in New York in 1980.

Fireworks lit the sky as McCartney sang “Live and Let Die.”

A crowd made up of Israelis of all ages, estimated at 40,000, cheered as McCartney performed outdoors in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park on a warm late summer night. Some wore T-shirts with the slogan, “I love Paul.”

He greeted the crowd with a mixture of English and Hebrew, wishing them “shana tova,” happy new year, ahead of next week’s Jewish new year holiday. He added “Ramadan kareem” in Arabic, a greeting to Muslims, who are marking their holy month.

His repertoire included many Beatles hits, as well as songs from his post-Beatles group, Wings. The songs included “Yesterday,” “Back in the USSR,” “Hey Jude” and “Jet.” He added two encores.

Japanese Seiji Ozawa

Seiji Ozawa

Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa took up his seat as a foreign member of France’s revered academy of fine arts Wednesday, joining the likes of US filmmaker Woody Allen and British architect Norman Foster. The 73-year-old was elected in 2001 as one of 16 associate foreign members of the academy, but it took seven years for him to fit the Paris ceremony into his hectic international schedule.

Wearing the academy’s traditional embroidered black-and-green top coat, designed by fellow member Pierre Cardin, Ozawa was formally welcomed by French Culture Minister Christine Albanel into the 200-year-old institution.

Founded in 1816, the revered body honours 57 artists from the fields of painting and sculpture to film, photography and music, in addition to its foreign members.

Addressing the Japanese maestro, the opera director Hugues Gall recalled that Ozawa won a young conductor’s contest in the eastern French city of Besancon in 1959, marking the start of his “relationship with France”.

“This relationship has been going on for close to 50 years, and you constantly renewed it with your concert programmes by showing France a loyalty, an attention and — why not say it — a very special kind of love,” Gall said.

Henry Paulson Jr

Treasury chief Paulson on verge of historic new powers. Secretary Paulson is not the sole architect of the Bush administration’s bailout strategy for the US economy, of course. By all accounts he is part of a troika of top policymakers with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed Chief Timothy Geithner.

But as the public face and dealmaker of the plan, Paulson is the one most in the spotlight. Moreover, bailout legislation submitted to Congress by the White House over the weekend would transform Paulson’s office into that of temporary overseer of America’s entire financial system.

This may not be the role that former Goldman Sachs head Paulson envisioned when he signed on as President Bush’s third Treasury chief.

“But he has to do this. He has no choice,” says Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland and the former chief economist at the US International Trade Commission.

The proposed expanded powers for the Treasury secretary are one aspect of the Bush bailout plan that has drawn criticism from Democratic members of Congress.

George Takei marries longtime partner

In this image released by The Rafu Shimpo, a bagpiper leads Brad Altman, second left, and actor

George Takei from their wedding at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy to a reception at the Japanese American National Museum, in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008.

Behind Takei are fellow ‘Star Trek’ actors Walter Koenig, partially obscured, and Nichelle Nicols. AP