Usher to teach success in sports, entertainment

Cleveland – Grammy-winning R&B artist Usher wants to teach teenagers how to succeed in sports and entertainment.

Usher will promote the industries as career paths when he speaks Saturday at a teen leadership seminar sponsored by the YMCA in Cleveland.

More than 400 students in seventh through 12th grades are expected at the Midwest Black/Hispanic Achievers Teen Leadership Summit.

Lohan’s mother concerned about daughter’s smoking

New York – Lindsay Lohan’s manager-mother, Dina, says she’s worried about the starlet’s smoking habit.

“Lindsay’s smoking,” Dina Lohan says in an interview in Seventeen magazine’s April issue, now on newsstands. “You think I like it? No. I cry to her. I told her, ‘You have to stop smoking. You have asthma. You could die. This isn’t good for you.’ I can tell her, but I’m her mother. Did you listen to your mother at 19?”

The actress-singer, whose upcoming films include “A Prairie Home Companion,” was treated at a Miami-area hospital in early January for an asthma attack.

As for Lindsay’s drastic weight loss last year, Dina Lohan is quoted as saying: “Lindsay never had bulimia. Lindsay wasn’t eating properly. … When she initially lost the weight, she’d had a very tough year, was in the hospital, came out, and was like, ‘Wow, I look hot – my pants look so thin.’ Her stylist is thin. She’s styling thin girls. That’s what happens. This isn’t something new.”

Dina Lohan adds: “My child is not perfect. I am not perfect. And if you tell me you’re perfect, you’re a liar. I want Lindsay to fail – kids need failure to have success.”

Crowe, wife expecting boy

Burbank, Calif. – Russell Crowe and his wife are expecting a boy.

The “Gladiator” star told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” on Friday that he and his wife, actress Danielle Spencer, are expecting the baby in June or July. They had previously announced the pregnancy, but not the baby’s gender.

They already have a 2-year-old son, Charlie.

Crowe said Charlie knew a brother was on the way.

“He knows where the baby is in Mommy’s tummy and knows that he was a baby once and there’s another baby coming along,” Crowe said. “And we said, ‘Bubba, what do you want to call your brother?’ and his first option was Pumpkinhead. But then the next day, he revised it and he changed it to Stinky.”