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Oprah Winfrey and pal Gayle King took in the sights of Spain earlier this week -- part of a 14-day Mediterranean cruise Winfrey is taking her entire staff on as reported here first.
The duo toured the famous Catholic church Sagrada Familia (Temple of the Holy Family) in Barcelona.
Check out the Faded Youth Blog for more pics of Winfrey and King in Spain
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey made a stop at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, in Henley on Klip, South Africa, last Friday before setting off to the Mediterranean for a 14-day-cruise with her entire staff.
Winfrey told the Associated Press that the dream she had for the poor girls attending the school she established in South Africa is coming true.
Photos: AP
Photos: AP
Oprah Winfrey : the world's greatest boss?
For the second time in recent years, she's making a strong case for that title by taking her entire staff and their families on vacation. This time they're going on a lavish Mediterranean cruise.
Winfrey and her staff will leave Chicago on Saturday. The cruise ship will stop in Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece and Malta. She is covering transportation, food, drinks and activities at port stops.
In 2005, Winfrey celebrated the end of her "Wildest Dreams" season by surprising her staff with an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
According to Chicago-based Best Travel, a cruise like the one Winfrey is taking her staff on costs about $5,400 a person.
... as reported last week, Oprah Winfrey and her team from the Oprah Winfrey Network dined at Spiaggia in Chicago -- a favorite of President Barack Obama's.
By JANET LUNDQUIST Sun-Times News Group
It's been said anything Oprah touches turns to gold.
A 7-year-old from Plainfield is hoping Winfrey will have the same effect on her fundraising project.
Hannah Durante is raising money for A Walk in the Park, an event held by Six Flags and Cure Kids Cancer at parks across the country.
The event raises money for pediatric cancer research.
Hannah was born with one kidney, which necessitates regular checkups at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said her mother Amy Durante.
Hannah is doing fine. But some other children they met at the hospital weren't doing as well, Amy said.
"Every time we'd go, I was in tears. It just breaks my heart to see the other kids," Amy said.
They wracked their brains thinking of ways to help the less-fortunate youngsters. Last year, they discovered A Walk in the Park, and participated at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee.
They decided to do it again this year. Besides the sponsor-gathering e-mail sent to friends and family, Amy decided to send a request to Oprah Winfrey.
She continued calling and e-mailing Oprah, her publicist and other employees of Harpo Productions until Friday, when a member of Oprah's staff called her back.
"He said (Oprah) was inspired. She couldn't believe a 7-year-old was doing this," Amy said. "Persistence totally pays off. It doesn't matter if she's a celebrity. She lives in Chicago. She's aware. I know she does good things."
Hannah's goal was to raise $1,300. Thanks to a financial boost from Oprah Winfrey, who matched the $1,240 Hannah had raised by that point, the total was $2,935.34 as of Wednesday afternoon.
Oprah even posted a message on Hannah's fundraising Web page at my.walkintheparks.org/hannah7: "Hannah, You have inspired everyone to make a difference. Continue!"
Oprah's comment helped draw attention to Hannah's fundraising team, Team Friends, Amy said. There are comments on her Web page from people the Durantes don't even know.
But the Durantes aren't just sitting back, letting Oprah's clout pull in the donations.
They will sell $1 hot dogs at Strack & Van Til, at Route 59 and Caton Farm Road in Joliet, from noon to 5 p.m. Friday.
The store donated the hot dogs, and all the proceeds will go toward Cure Kids Cancer.
Who's the one person capable of knocking Oprah Winfrey out of Forbes' top spot on the list of the world's most powerful celebs?
Angelina Jolie.
Winfrey, who topped the list last year, was dethroned and moved to the No. 2 spot on the annual Forbes list, which came out yesterday.
"Though viewership for the self-made billionaire's flagship chat fest, The Oprah Winfrey Show, continues to erode, her earning power remains resilient," the list said.
The Celebrity 100 list ranks the rich and famous based on media exposure and earnings over the past year.
Although finishing second to Jolie, Winfrey still is the highest earner on the list, raking in more than $275 miliion.
Madonna, Beyonce and Tiger Woods rounded out the top five on the list.
Oprah Winfrey, center, enters Wallace Wade Stadium at Duke University where she was the graduation keynote speaker in May.
Oprah Winfrey isn't signing a lease for a Los Angeles studio for her show moving, according to a scoop from Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed today.
A Winfrey rep denies that and a rumor that Winfrey is eyeing at the massive $150 million Holmby Hills, Calif., estate of Candy Spelling, who is the widow of the late TV legend Aaron Spelling. Stay tuned.
Note to blog readers: I'm back Oprah Winfrey blogging after being on other assignments for the past month. Look for an update on what you missed in the next day or so.
Oprah Winfrey's in-house medical and health expert is leaving his spot as a regular on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to launch his own syndicated program this fall.
Winfrey will bid Dr. Mehmet Oz farewell on Tuesday's episode of her Chicago-based talk show. His program, "The Dr. Oz Show," is to debut Sept. 14.
Oz has been featured on Winfrey's show for five years and 55 episodes. He would often offer diet tips or discuss life-threatening diseases.
Tuesday's show ends with Oz and Winfrey raising a champagne toast.
According to Oz's biography on Oprah.com, the best-selling author and heart surgeon is a surgery professor at Columbia University and directs the Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. AP
Oprah Winfrey talked about courage, making wise choices and helping others during a commencement address Sunday at Duke University, which gave her an honorary degree.During her 25-minute speech beneath overcast skies, the talk show host told the 4,400 graduates and their guests that "one of the best ways to enhance your own life is to enhance somebody else's" and to "stand proudly in your own shoes while you help others stand in theirs."
"How can I help somebody else move to higher ground? That is success. That's it. That's why we're all alive," she said.
She also emphasized the need to make wise choices daily, saying, "Each of us has to stand in our own shoes. Will you stand in them in humility and compassion and courage? Every day will give you a chance to make that choice."
Duke President Richard H. Brodhead presented Winfrey with an honorary doctor of humane letters degree.
She also had a personal connection with the 2009 class at the Durham, N.C., school. Her godson, William Bumpus, son of her well-known friend, Gayle King, was among the graduates.
"Will never wants people to know he knows me," Winfrey joked. "I'm like his crazy aunt that they let out at commencements."
Preceding Winfrey was student speaker Robert Paul Jones, a 2002 graduate who returned to Duke to receive his medical degree. He teased her about her celebrity, and pretended to be interrupted by a cell phone call as he began his remarks.
"Ms. Winfrey, apparently your limousine is double-parked in front of the chapel," Jones joked. "Duke Parking wanted me to let you know they won't release your honorary degree until you pay your parking fine." AP
It's a girl! Seal and Heidi Klum confirmed during Friday's segment of "The Oprah Winfrey" show that they are expecting a baby girl -- which will be Klum's fourth child.
Klum, 35, and Seal, 46, have two sons together -- Henry Gunther, 3, and Johan Riley, 2. They're also parents to to 4-year-old Leni, whose father is Italian businessman Flavio Briatore but who was later adopted by Seal.
Several weeks ago, Seal announced his wife's pregnancy to the audience at his New York City concert.
Klum will finally be back hosting "Project Runway" in August.
Speaking for the first time since finding out about her husband's affair, Elizabeth Edwards said Monday she has no interest in finding out whether John Edwards fathered a child with another woman and that she still loves her husband.
"You asked your husband for one gift when you got married, what was that?" Winfrey asked Edwards during the interview taped from the family's North Carolina home.
"I wanted him to be faithful to me," Edwards explained. "It was enormously important to me."
Despite tabloid rumors claiming John Edwards did father a child with the unnamed woman he was having an affair with years ago, Elizabeth said she won't let that define her life -- or her marriage.
"This is the part where you have to concentrate on your own life. Whatever the facts are doesn't change my life in a sense," Edwards said.
In October 2007, The National Enquirer began a series of reports claiming John Edwards had an affair with a former campaign worker. In August 2008, Edwards admitted the affair in 2006 but denied being the father of the woman's child.
"Did you make the choice to work on this marriage because your husband is who he is -- meaning a politician and his career -- or did you make the decision because you were sick?" Winfrey asked.
"I don't think you get to do it twice so I don't have any idea. I'm certain being sick meant a number of things to me," Edwards said. "One is that my life is going to be less long and I didn't want to spend it fighting. But it also meant that I was reminded constantly of how supportive he had been and what a great husband he had been. I'm not going to let it define my life ... and I don't want it to define our marriage."
Asked whether she was still in love with her husband, Elizabeth said it's a complicated question, but that trust if a "very important part of love" and she wouldn't be there if she didn't love him.
"This is a really good man, who did a really bad thing," Edwards said. "If you take that piece out, I do have a perfect marriage."
Edwards spoke with Winfrey in an episode airing the day before her book "Resilience" -- which chronicles how she dealt with John Edwards' affair -- hits store shelves.
"I thinks he's probably as surprised at his behavior as I am in his behavior," Edwards said.
"No one is perfect. This is certainly a place I would have hoped for perfection, but no one's perfect."
Like many other women in her situation, Edwards said there was a time when she questioned what she had done to cause her husband's affair, but later realized it never was about her.
"I'm still angry and hurt and have a lot of self-doubt about who I was, what I meant to him," Edwards said.
At times, Edwards said she wanted to know every detail of her husband's affair to put the pieces of the puzzle together in her own way.
"Sometimes the detail was a detail I wanted to know because I was just curious," she said. "Sometimes the detail was because I thought that might be a window for me to try and understand."
John Edwards -- who was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and 2008 -- said at the end of the interview there was a time when he believed his wife would leave him, and that the two are on the right path to healing their marriage.
"I didn't know what she would do," John Edwards said. "I don't think anyone knows when they go through something like this."
Winfrey will chronicle more of her interview with Edwards in the June edition of O: The Oprah Magazine.
It was Harpo Hook Up Day today on "Oprah," and guests of the show weren't the only beneficiaries.
Count yourself among the hooked up ... with some free chicken.
KFC and Oprah are teaming up to offer you a free two-piece Kentucky Grilled Chicken meal. That's right -- this is not just the chicken. We're also talking two sides and a biscuit!
For information on how to get your free Kentucky Grilled Chicken, visit oprah.com/kfc.
Elizabeth Edwards tells talk show host Oprah Winfrey that it's a "complicated question" if she still is in love with her husband, former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen John Edwards, after his admitted affair.
In an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to air Thursday, Winfrey asks Edwards, "Are you still in love with him?"
Edwards responds, "You know, that's a complicated question," in an excerpt provided in advance by Harpo Productions.
Continue reading Elizabeth Edwards on Thursday 'Oprah': Love is complicated.
Someone's having an "aha moment," but is it Oprah Winfrey or the company that's trying to use the media mogul's famous catch phrase?
Winfrey isn't happy her famous phrase -- heard on almost every media platform she dominates -- is being used in a new promotional campaign for the Mutual of Omaha Bank, so she slapped the company with a cease and desist letter claiming she owns the rights for the famous phrase.
Not so fast, says the company, who then filed a lawsuit against Winfrey saying she abandoned any rights she may have to the phrase by failing to "police the alleged mark" when other businesses used it in advance.
According to TMZ , the suit was filed in a federal court in Nebraska on April 22 and lawyers have requested the judge allow the bank to continue with its promotional campaign.
"Harpo has not filed a lawsuit or counterclaim against Mutual of Omaha. We hope to reach an amicable resolution on this issue," a Winfrey rep told TMZ.
A sit-down interview with the grandparents of murdered two-year-old Caylee Anthony and Oprah Winfrey isn't going to happen as planned.
George and Cindy Anthony were slated to head to Chicago to talk with Winfrey in what was being plugged as one of three exclusive TV interviews Winfrey scored for the month of May.
However, after the Anthonys agreed to do a sit down with "The Early Show" on CBS, Winfrey's reps pulled the interview.
"Based on the Anthonys' decision to appear on other programs, we have decided not to move forward with their interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show at this time," a statement from Winfrey's show said.
The interview on Winfrey's show would have been the first time the Anthony's had been interviewed since their granddaughter's remains were found.
FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oprah Winfrey has canceled an episode of her talk show that was to mark the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, saying it focused too much on the killers.
The episode titled "10 Years Later: The Truth about Columbine" was to air Monday, the anniversary of the massacre in Littleton, Colo., that killed 12 students and a teacher.
Winfrey posted a message Monday morning on her Facebook page, saying that after she reviewed the taped show she decided to pull it because of its focus on the two gunmen.
She urged viewers to keep the Columbine community in their thoughts.
Winfrey said she would air a program about a mother released from prison in place of the Columbine piece. Her company Harpo Productions confirmed the announcement.
It's one of the first wars of its kind. But in the end, Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher beat out CNN in a battle to gain over one million followers on Twitter.
Kutcher told talk show host Oprah Winfrey on Friday that "there are giant things you can do on this platform at 140 characters at a time."
Winfrey -- who used Friday's live broadcast to send out her first tweet "HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY ." -- admitted she doesn't really know what Twitter is -- but spent most of her show responding to messages she received.
Before Winfrey's first tweet, she already had over 75,000 people following @oprah on Twitter.
"Now I've joined Twitter. Here's my first -- it's called a Tweet? I'm stepping into the Twitterverse!" Winfrey said. "It's too cool. I'm still not sure I really get it. I left my building today and my doorman said I hear you're Tweeting today."
Winfrey received tweets from George Stephanopoulos, Jimmy Fallon, Shaquille O'Neal and Ellen DeGeneres, who tweeted, "Oprah Winfrey, what are you doing on here? Shouldn't you be working on our cover?"
Kutcher, or @aplusk on Twitter, had nearly 2,000 followers more than CNN when he reached the million milestone earlier this morning.
"We found out that CNN was on TV and Anderson Cooper was going off on how CNN has to win this thing, so we decided to go live on the Web (to gain support," Kutcher said.
"I didn't necessarily say I want a million people following. What I thought was really interesting was that in some ways this is a commentary on the state of media." Kutcher said. "You -- through your own stream -- can actually have your own voice as loud as a media network. I thought that it was kind of like an uprising of the Internet."
Kutcher waged war earlier this week after noticing that he had nearly as many followers on Twitter account as CNN.
If he won, Kutcher said he would donate 10,000 mosquito nets to stop the spread of Malaria and ding-dong ditch CNN's honcho Ted Turner's house.
During Friday's show, Winfrey pledged $200,000 to buy 20,000 mosquito nets.
If there's anyone who can have almost 69,000 followers on Twitter (as of Friday morning) without a single tweet, you bet it's Oprah Winfrey.
But those caught up in the Twittersphere won't have to wait much longer.
The queen of daytime -- who's already established quite the following on Twitter via @oprah -- will tweet for the first time tomorrow during her live Friday broadcast.
No word yet on whether Winfrey herself will be the one updating her Twitter badge from then on out.
Ashton Kutcher -- who recently challenged CNN to see who'd be the first to get 1 million followers on Twitter -- also will appear on the show.
Happy Monday, everybody! Hilarious.
About the blogger
Mark Bieganski is an online content guru for the Chicago Sun-Times and RogerEbert.com. He follows the Oprah phenom like it's a religion. He's been to the show three times as an audience member (he'll make the show as a guest someday) and has had the Oprah show on season pass ever since getting a Tivo two years ago.
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