People in the News

Pipe bomb detonated outside NYC studio

New York – An explosive device detonated outside a studio owned by “The Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli early Tuesday, damaging a van but causing no serious injuries, police said.

Police said they did not know if the explosion was connected to Imperioli’s Studio Dante.

Several residents in apartments above the studio were evacuated after the device went off about 1 a.m., police said.

The police department’s bomb squad was investigating what kind of explosive was used and why it was detonated in front of the Manhattan building, two blocks south of Madison Square Garden.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said there had been no known threats to the location or its owners. Investigators believe someone planted the device – a fused pipe bomb – on a tiled ledge near the theater entrance before it exploded, he said.

The blast “blew out windows of a van parked in front of the building, and thankfully no one was injured,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “While there certainly is no evidence that this was terrorism, we are taking this and every act of violence extremely seriously.”

Imperioli played Christopher Moltisanti, Tony Soprano’s nephew, on the HBO television show.

Jerry Lewis apologizes for slur during telethon

New York – Jerry Lewis dropped an anti-gay slur – the same one that got Isaiah Washington of “Grey’s Anatomy” in trouble – during the 18th hour of his annual Labor Day telethon.

He apologized Tuesday for a “bad choice of words.”

The 81-year-old showman – prowling about the stage during the live telecast Monday in Las Vegas – was goofing around and dodging his cameraman, then went into a ramble about imaginary family members.

“Oh, your family has come to see you,” he said, speaking to the camera and gesturing toward thin air.

“You remember Bart, your older son,” he said, and motioning toward another unseen character, “Jesse, the illiterate f—–.

“No,” Lewis said, quickly stopping himself before continuing.

In a statement Tuesday, Lewis said he was making “a joking comment to a member of my production team.”

“I apologize to anyone who was offended,” he went on. “Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard. In the family atmosphere of the telethon, I forget that not everyone knows me that well.

“That something like this would distract from the true purpose of the telethon pains me deeply. … I accept responsibility for what I said. There are no excuses,” he said.

Lewis’ telethon, in its 42nd year, set a new record by raising $63.7 million to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association, topping last year’s event by $3 million.

‘Idol’ Kelly Clarkson announces fall schedule

New York – Kelly Clarkson, who scrapped an earlier tour this summer due to slow sales, is heading back on the road this fall.

The Grammy-winning singer announced Tuesday she would kick off a theater tour Oct. 14 at New York City’s Beacon Theater, winding down in Nashville on Dec. 4 at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.

“I’m getting pumped to get out there and rock with y’all,” she said in a statement. “We intend to blow the roof off these theaters.”

The former “American Idol” champ had a rough summer, splitting with her manager amid friction with her record label over the direction of her third album, “My December,” which debuted at a disappointing No. 2 on the charts. In July, Clarkson canceled an arena tour due to slow ticket sales, and organizers said that they planned to re-evaluate the size of the tour.

Nicole Kidman formerly engaged to mystery man

New York – Nicole Kidman says she was engaged to a mystery man in between breaking up with Tom Cruise and marrying Keith Urban.

“I didn’t really want a relationship,” the 40-year-old actress says. “I just wanted my kids to have me, and I didn’t feel comfortable having some person in that small hubbub.”

“And then I got engaged to somebody … but it just wasn’t right,” she continues in Vanity Fair magazine’s October issue, on newsstands Sept. 11. “I wasn’t ready. We weren’t ready.”

Details, please.

“I get engaged and I get married – that’s my thing,” she says, declining to reveal her former fiance’s identity. “I don’t want to date. I’m interested in a very, very deep connection.”

Kidman and Cruise divorced in 2001 after 10 years of marriage. They have two adopted children, Isabella, 14, and Connor, 12.

Kidman, who married country singer Urban in June 2006, says she has no regrets when it comes to her marriage to Cruise.

Kidman hopes to have a baby with Urban.

“I’m yearning to have one,” she says. “I think I would be very sad if I wasn’t able to have a baby. Keith knows I want one, and he has been getting there slowly.”

Brad Pitt muses about being a celebrity

Venice, Italy – Brad Pitt, who plays Jesse James in his latest film, says being a celebrity in America today is not that much different from in the days of the legendary outlaw – then and now there was all that hype.

Pitt, who was at the Venice Film Festival to promote “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” has served as endless grist for the tabloid mill since he hooked up with Angelina Jolie.

“People have asked me today about the celebrity angle,” the 43-year-old Pitt told Associated Press Television in an interview Monday in the lagoon city, “and certainly that’s one aspect of the film – that’s not the main focus of the film.”

Pitts mused that James was one of America’s biggest celebrities at that time, “and the funny thing to me is that it doesn’t seem that different today as it was then, in the sense that a lot of it was manufactured, a lot of it was sensationalized, very little of it was based on truth and even after his death, like we just saw with Anna Nicole Smith, the melee that ensues from it.”