Still holding out hope to win your dream trip through a malarial jungle with Nick Kristof? Bad news for you, then, kiddies. We're reliably informed that the Times has winnowed the list of applicants down to about 15 finalists, and those finalists have been notified and asked to send along academic transcripts. (You've got to be an enrolled student at an American university for the change to spend time on a bedbug-infested mattress with Nick and his chin dimple, alas.) So if you haven't heard from them, you're no longer in it. Sorry about that.

• NB to Scarlett Johansson: You're ours, bitch. You're just pretty property of the paparazzi. If you continue to fight it, you'll only continue to embarrass yourself. [Gilded Moose]
• Uh, breaking? Britney Spears did not have a press conference today to address pregnancy rumors. So, you know, back to rampant and unfounded speculation. [BlogNYC]
• One man dared to follow Tom Cruise all over town yesterday. That man is to be respected, but only from afar. Get too close, and he seems kind of scary. [Confessions of a Celebrity Stalker]
• Now that Mexico has legalized marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, you'll have a much easier time deciding on a vacation locale. [NY Sun]
• When it comes to Kaavya Viswanathan satire, Forbes' Karl Shmavonian gives Mediabistro's Laurel Touby a run for her money. [Forbes]
• Our dark master emerges from his gilded loft! Oh, the sunlight, how it stings! [Blogebrity]
• In the Times' write-up of the Costume Institute Gala, there's but one line you need to read to understand it all: "'Can you believe they're giving us pies?' a British model said when a lamb pie was put in front of her." [NYT]
• Herve Villachez, just because we feel like it. [Pimpadelic Wonderland via Vidiot]

• Inspired by the tactics of Tom Cruise, Britney Spears may be holding a press conference later today to formally announce her pregnancy. Supposedly Federletus 2 is a girl. [IMDb]
• Unfortunately, Britney's dipping into the new baby's college fund to pay for the minder she's hired to keep an eye on houseboy Keving Federline. [Scoop]
• When aren't Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger fighting in court over custody of their 10-year-old daughter? And there's no way that poor kid has sat through all of this drama completely sober. [Page Six]
• Maury Povich, who's accused of cheating on wife Connie Chung with one of his producers, is now suspected of having a second mistress. Ladies, honestly. Maury Povich. Get ahold of yourselves. [R&M]
• After falling out of a coconut tree in Fiji, Rolling Stone Keith Richards' brain is hemorrhaging; the rocker must undergo an operation to drain blood from his skull, after which he's expected to make a complete recovery. If his body can survive the 70's, it certainly can handle this. [Page Six]
• News you can't use: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il got pervy with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. [Lowdown]

Feel you don't know quite enough about Dubai, the United Arab Emirate that could not possibly be trusted to own the company that runs our ports? Of course not. And this, friends, is why God — or, at least, Nick Denton — created Gridskipper, and wanderlusting little brother. This week, lil 'Skipper has broken the chains of Manhattan and set off, Lawrence-like, to explore this little corner of Arabia. Won't you follow him as he spends a fancy-free week in Dubai? He started things off by locating several Starbucksim, and we assure you things get even better from there. Bon voyage!

On Sunday, April 23, The Harvard Crimson was breaking news that Kaavya Viswanathan was a plagiarist. Halfway around the world, meantime, The Hindu, which calls itself "India's National Newspaper," was that same day publishing a fairly fawning Q&A with the little Indian-American girl made good. (Made better?) A Gawker reader stumbled across that Hindu interview this morning, and we must stop now to save its final bit:

Maybe our boss is being paid off by Jared Paul Stern. Maybe he's trying to score with him. (Ah, those lips.) Either way, we've received orders to continue this ongoing and misguided campaign to suggest that everyone is as corrupt as Page Six is (they're not) and to obfuscate the reality that no matter what other skeeziness exists in the world JPS is still the one on tape asking Ron Burkle for hush money (he is). In today's installment, here are photos of the Daily News's Jo Piazza*, a reporter for the Rush & Molloy gossip column, on that junket to Turkey we previously mentioned. That's her in a headscarf above. And there's more after the jump.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. You might have gathered this from the fairly cool portrait collection the Times ran (and teased on the front page) to mark the occasion. And how, you may ask, did Conde Nast chose to mark it? The only way they know how, according to this report from deep within 4 Times Square:

In the Times today, there's an article on Japan's "empress of domesticity," Harumi Kurihara. Kurihara is in the States to debut her first English-language cookbook, Harumi's Japanese Cooking, a natural expansion of her Japanese brand which includes "television cooking shows, housewares stores, cookbooks and food magazines" that "have propelled her to rock-star status in Japan." Sound familiar? Of course it does: The Martha is multiplying, like an evil, apron-wearing mogwai.

Hey, anyone got an extra placenta handy? Tom Cruise is hungry, and he's got a hankering for some fresh afterbirth. Or so say those excitable lads across the pond, who have splattered "Tom Chews" across the Daily Mirror, certain to nauseate many a British reader before they've had their morning tea. In the May issue of GQ, which just hit UK newsstands, Cruise says:

Last week, a group of six New Yorkers were on a Caribbean vacation in St. Maarten. Two of them were brutally beaten — one, Dick Jefferson, a 51-year-old top producer at the CBS Evening News, is out of the hospital but now has a titanium plate in his head; the other, a 25-year-old researcher there, remains in intensive care with brain injuries. Why were they beaten? Because they're gay, and the attackers had earlier that night been thrown out of a bar for heckling Smith and his boyfriend, Justin Swenson. ABCNews.com did a thorough story earlier this week, which made an interesting point:

Well, hey, with those 10 articles by 13 reporters totaling 10,000 words — plus two more pieces today — the Times has sort of made this thing its own, right?

• Times happily runs advertising section from Sudan, whose leaders — as Times columnist Nick Kristof likes to point out — are encouraging genocide. [NYDN]
• Lewis Lapham, as he steps down from Harper's editorship, will keep working. And keep smoking. [WP]
• One Park, a reality show about life at AMI, moves closer to happening. Except that the lawyers are against it, chief David Pecker is against it, and the company doesn't have the rights to the name "One Park." But, you know, otherwise things are good. [WWD]
• CJR disses Marketwatch media writer Jon Friedman. Hard. [CJR Daily]

Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown appeared Britain's High Court yesterday on behalf of Random House U.K., which is being sued by two authors who claim Brown's book imitates the central theme of their older work, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. While defending the originality of his work, Brown revealed a little bit about himself: he never watched television as a child. His father used to devise codes and games for Brown to find his Christmas presents. Blythe Brown, his wife, does most of his research and is said to be "forceful."

Slobodan Milosevic died Saturday, as you certainly know by now. Since then, authorities have determined that he died of a heart attack and that an unprescribed medication was in his bloodstream, and they have not yet been able to rule out suicide. The good news, however, is that actor Bill Murray was unharmed.

It's a sad day to be a Briton: BrandRepublic reports that UK Maxim editor and beloved HuffPo pixie Greg Gutfeld is saying farewell to the little boys' club, as his contract is up in May and Dennis Publishing has decided not to renew. Additionally, circulation has dropped 16.2%, due in no small part to the proliferation of weekly lad mags, which are all the hotness in the UK right now. When asked for comment, Gutfeld busted out the Blackberry and told Gawker:

Earlier: 'Glamour' Organizes Dutch Death Match

Think the only benefits of TimesSelect are Maureen Dowd's musings and a blog by that Frank Rich look-alike? Oh no. Not at all. Yesterday evening, TimesSelect members became the very first to learn about this incredibly exciting opportunity:

Aside from the unfortunate coincidence that Reese Witherspoon is a mother with two kids, Tatler forces you to realize just how far our glossies have fallen behind. While Seventeen pieces together a ho-hum interview with Dina Lohan, Tatler gets to the point with a cover story on "mothers who do coke with their kids." Really, isn't this exactly why the British press is so much better than ours? Now, if they could only keep our American actresses straight — this is clearly a Lindsay Lohan issue, not a Reese one — they'd be perfect.

As we were perusing Style.com's extensive photo collections of Paris' current fashion week extravaganza, we couldn't help but notice the lack of "and friend" captions. Whereas the picture at right, from the Dior backstage gallery, would have once been captioned, "Kate Hudson and friend," it now simply reads, "Kate Hudson, right." (Oh, is she on the right side? Thanks, we were confused.)

• Now that we're certain British crackhead Pete Doherty is a real person, we can fully appreciate his latest arrest for car theft. Oh, don't worry — he was charged with possession, too. He wouldn't drop the ball and let you down like that. [BBC]
• Funny how a handful of the featured artists at the Whitney Biennial are with or have shown at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery. Funny how Sylvia Chivaratanond, who works at the gallery, is partners with Biennial co-curator Philippe Vergne. [Anonymous Female Artist]
• Think about it: You've lost your home, your city, perhaps even your loved ones. The last thing a Katrina victim wants is an afternoon shopping with Britney Spears. [AP]
• There is no line between a normal New Yorker and an actual bad person. They're one in the same, you fucking twit. Now move. [Logged Hours]
• Stars nowadays suck. [Ad Age]
• Bad news for Broadway, as casting for the musical version of Legally Blonde is requesting "Abercrombie & Fitch fraternity and sorority types." [NewYorkology]
• Life ain't easy when you're Mark the Cobrasnake. You have to, like, wear visors and stuff, even when you don't feel like it. [Vulture Droppings]
• More headline laziness. Why not be creative? We're thinking more like "Mrs. Smith Sucks Off Washington." [Gilded Moose]