Oprah’s California mansion is safe. Firefighters are finally getting a handle on wildfires, which destroyed hundreds of homes in Santa Barbara hills where a number of celebrities live and threatened the mansion of Oprah Winfrey. Fire came close to Oprah Winfrey’s mansion, but managed to miss the sprawling structure and the homes of many of the talk show host’s friends, whom she called on Friday to see whether they were ok after wind-driven fires forced them to flee with little more than their pets. Winfrey told her TV audience that had her estate actually caught fire, her main concern would have been her dogs, since she didn’t have any children. Wild fires spread to the northern edge of Los Angeles, cutting power to a hospital, which was force to operate on backup power Monday. They also forced firefighters to evacuate 5,000 people from the town of Sylmar just north of Los Angeles. Officials say the wind-blown blazes scorched more than 20,000 acres over the past four days and destroyed nearly 1,000 homes, including 500 homes in a trailer park. But no injuries have been reported. Winds eased by Monday morning, allowing firefighters to put in firebreaks and lift evacuation orders for about 25,000 people.

 Beyoncé tells Oprah she’s not pregnant. Oprah Winfrey got singer Beyoncé to open up Thursday about her worst-kept-secret marriage to rap-trepreneur Jay-Z, which Be says “feels great.” The performer also discussed her role as the soulful Etta James in the forthcoming film Cadillac Records. In the movie part, Beyoncé sings James’ timeless hit “At Last.” Other topics during the exclusive interview included the singer’s role in preparing Thanksgiving dinner this month. “Usually, I make the ice water,” Beyoncé joked. And last, but not least, the sexy performer put a lingering rumor about her to rest. “Are you pregnant?” Oprah asked. “No,” Be answered. “Everybody wants me to be pregnant. …Maybe in a couple years.”

After 24 years of hosting and executive producing the Oprah Winfrey show, its rumored that the diva of all talk show hosts may be leaving to work full-time with OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network), which is a partnership between Harpo and Discovery Communications in Silver Spring, Md. “We’re talking now about what the presence will be and what kind of programming she would be involved in directly. But this is her chapter 2, and building the OWN brand online and on-air is… a core mission for her,” said Discovery CEO David Zaslav on a conference call. Although, he said Winfrey plans to leave in 2011 when her syndication contract ends with CBS and ABC, Harpo spokesperson Lisa Halliday is calling Zaslav’s comments “premature.” “She has not made a final decision as to whether she will continue her show in syndication. CBS Television Distribution also released a statement yesterday, saying it “would certainly welcome and hope that ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ would continue in syndication beyond [2011], but that is a decision only Ms. Winfrey will be making.”

Marion Jones speaks out about her jail time.

Saying she will focus on efforts to help children learn from her mistakes, recently released Olympian Marion Jones gave her first interview to Oprah Winfrey since being stripped of five Olympic medals and serving several months of jail time for lying in court about using steroids. Once the world’s most famous woman sprinter, Jones still insists she didn’t knowingly take performance-enhancing drugs, believing they were a diet supplement. “I’m trying to move on,” she told Winfrey. “I hope that everybody else can move on, too.” Asked about her lowest moment while jailed, Jones said “so many things to count.” She concluded that missing the birthdays of both her 5- and 1-year-old sons topped the list. Jones wept as she read a letter she’d written to the boys while incarcerated. But she expressed a new pleasure at having people deal with her as a non-sports heroine. “I appreciate, so much, the little things,” Jones added. “I am energized by this next chapter.”

Accused extortionist wants $180 million from Oprah.

A man who unsuccessfully demanded more than a million dollars from Oprah Winfrey now wants $180 million. Keifer Bonvilliain backed off after he was reported to authorities for saying he wanted big dollars to withhold a tape of the talk show diva’s employee making damaging statements about Winfrey. Bonvilliain was arrested and charges were dropped last year, but now he says his “reputation” was damaged “on a world level,” according to his lawsuit. Winfrey’s peeps say the suit will give them a chance to revisit whether Bonvillain did an illegal wiretapping to start the whole mess in the first place.

Lyfe Jennings reportedly demanded children, fired shots.

A witness to the Georgia incident in which Lyfe Jennings allegedly kicked in his estranged girlfriend’s door before firing a gun and leading cops on a chase says the singer wanted one thing. “Where are my kids?” the woman, who called 911, quotes Jennings as yelling. “I want my f–king kids!” A recording of the emergency call about Jennings’ alleged behavior last week indicates that the singer retrieved the pistol from his car. He later jumped in and fled cops until he had a wreck and was arrested, say police. Jennings faces charges of attempting to elude police, discharging a firearm near a public highway, refusing an alcohol test and felony weapons possession by a convict. The Toledo, Ohio native served prison time for arson before launching his music career.

Congressman says McCain sowed seeds of hate. Like segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace did in the 1960s, presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are “sowing the seeds of hatred” in the way he is going about trying to discredit his rival, Sen. Barack Obama. The civil rights veteran leader and Democratic Georgia congressman said on Saturday that McCain’s increasingly negative campaign tactics were reminiscent of the segregationist era of Wallace, a divisive political figure in his day, who, Lewis said, “created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. … What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.” Even as McCain, who is trailing Obama in the polls, was running ads calling his opponent a liar and questioning whether Obama can be trusted, McCain was quick to labeling Lewis’ remark as “shocking and beyond the pale.” He called for Obama to repudiate Lewis’ remarks. The Obama campaign also said that while Lewis was right to condemn “hateful rhetoric,” the Illinois senator did not believe McCain or his policy criticisms were comparable to Wallace or his segregationist policies as governor of Alabama in the 1960s. Meanwhile, both McCain and Palin, during campaign stops on Monday, seemed to change the tone and dial back their attacks against Obama, pointing up differences between the presidential rivals instead of launching more character attacks. 
U. of Wisconsin apologizes for “Blazing Saddles” clip. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has apologized to a Black student who during a class last year was shown a clip of the movie “Blazing Saddles” that features racial epithets, The Associated Press said. During a seminar for working professionals, an instructor showed a scene of the 1974 comedy in which Blacks are shown working on a railroad, according to a complaint filed by the student. Whites call the workers racial epithets and an overseer orders them to sing like slaves. The student complained and the school’s Office of Equity and Diversity, which investigates racial discrimination, got involved. Other students reportedly were offended by the clip and discussed their concerns verbally. The university would not release the name of the instructor or precisely why the clip was shown, other than to “help make points in the curriculum.” The workshop dealt with mental health assessment and diagnosis.  The student’s complaint said two of the 40 students in the class were African-American. “I did not attend the training to hear this type of derogatory, inflammatory, humiliating, painful and non-educating language,” the student wrote in the complaint. “This was a pointless and racist act on the part of your instructor.” The complaint prompted an apology in March from the Department of Professional Development and Applied Studies, which offered the course. “It was an insensitive error to use a video clip that included inflammatory and offensive language, and it will not happen again,” department official James Campbell wrote. “We strive to plan and offer quality programming that meets the needs of an array of professionals and are sorry we fell short of that goal in this instance.” Campbell said the student’s employer received a refund of the $230 cost of the training workshop, which the department decided not to offer again after “closely reviewing the evaluation comments.”
Former Atlanta cop is featured in Oprah’s “O” magazine. A former Atlanta police major who was fired last summer and got her job back last week is featured in the November issue of Oprah Winfrey’s “O” magazine. Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis, 48, of Douglasville was one of 80 women selected for a leadership training contest, “Women Rule!” The contest was for women involved in a project, such as a nonprofit organization or public policy initiative, who “wanted to take it to the next level,” according to the story. It drew 3,000 applicants. Davis’ project is listed as “Sisters-in-Law,” described as “a support network for women in law enforcement that also encourages girls to consider the profession by offering real-life role models,” the article states. The contest winners’ reward was three days of leadership training in New York in June.” Before the trip, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington demoted Davis and then fired her a week later in connection with a botched sex crimes investigation involving the husband of an Atlanta police sergeant. “I wasn’t going to go,” Davis said in a phone interview Monday with The Atlanta Journal Consitution. “I said, ‘They’re talking about disciplining me.’ I was more sick about it than anything.”  Family and friends convinced her to take the New York trip, and she’s glad she did. The feedback and camaraderie at the conference was exactly what she needed, she said. “The people at O magazine were so receptive to women’s issues.” Davis appealed her firing to the city’s Civil Service Board, which last week reversed her firing. It’s unclear whether Davis will return to the department at the rank of major, which was her position before she was demoted shortly before her firing.

Oprah’s ex-headmistress sues over her image.

The former honcho at Oprah’s institute for girls in South Africa is suing the billionaire founder, saying that she became a victim in Oprah Winfrey’s attempt to cover up charges of sexual and physical abuse at the school. Nomvuto Mzamane, the ex-headmistress at Winfrey’s Leadership Academy for Girls, said that Winfrey “launched what amounted to a defamatory campaign” last year. In demanding $250,000, she says that the talk-show host/philanthropist damaged her reputation by suggesting that she is “untrustworthy, failed the students of the academy, did not care about the students at the academy, knew of alleged physical and sexual abuse at the academy and participated in a cover-up of the alleged abuse.”

 Ludacris loses his pool house. No one was injured in the Fulton County fire that claimed rapper Ludacris’ pool house. The structure reportedly burned completely down, even though the blaze was extinguished within a half-hour. Ludacris wasn’t home at the time of the incident. The pool house was described by a fire official as being larger than most average residences.

Oprah lands role in “The Princess and the Frog.” Oprah Winfrey will return to her Southern roots with a voice part in a movie set in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Winfrey will help animate the character Eudora, mom of Princess Tiana in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. The talk show star also gave voice to the character Judge Bumbleton in 2007’s Bee Movie. The Princess and the Frog is set for release in 2009.

Nobody knows why a family’s two pit bulls blasted through the back door, mauled an infant girl to death and chewed up her grandmother, who tried to get her to safety. The grandmother, who survived the attack, had been baby-sitting at the time, she told Las Vegas Police. It appears that the dogs burst through a screen door of the North Las Vegas house and began attacking the 4-month-old, who was sitting in a stroller, police said.  “They just went right for the little girl,” North Las Vegas police Chief Joseph Forti told The Las Vegas Review-Journal. Grandma said she tried to “take the girl into another room, but the dogs forced their way in before she could close the door.” When police arrived, the dogs were still acting viciously, they said. Police shot and killed the pit bulls.

Oprah stays political. In recent weeks, rumors have surfaced that there’s an Oprah rebellion afoot. Word is that Oprah Winfrey’s announcement that she would not be allowing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to appear on her show, has sparked a backlash from women who say the Barack Obama supporter should provide equal time. But an impending insurrection doesn’t seem to be causing the talk-show diva to be less political. Today, Oprah will dedicate her show to a Senate bill targeting child predators, according to a release issued Friday by Chicago-based Harpo Productions. “What you are going to see is going to shock you to the core, but I’m asking you to please not turn away because this is happening in our country, to our children, in the United States every day,” said Winfrey, who says that show will highlight the “extent and pervasiveness of child pornography trafficking in America.”  The release says that Winfrey will ask viewers to contact their senators about U.S. Senate Bill 1738, the Protect Our Children Act. The top is nothing new for Winfrey, herself a victim of child abuse. In 1991, she testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in support of a national database of convicted child abusers. The hearing led to the signing of the so-called “Oprah Bill” in 1993. Her “Oprah’s Child Predator Watch List” has resulted in the capture of nine child predators, according to Harpo.

Bring That Week Back! Are Queen Latifah and her “boo” trying to adopt? Plus pregnancy scandal hits the race for the White House and Oprah gets dissed. Get caught up on the week’s hottest stories with pics here!