Sweden’s Challenges Included a Dynamite Explosion and One of The Hardest Tasks of Previous Seasons

Amazing Race” brought back one of the most difficult challenges of previous seasons Sunday night- finding a flag in a hay bale - and it almost cost father and son team Matt and Gary the game.

Fortunately for them, it wasn’t an elimination leg and they can continue the race, though their penalty for coming last will be an extra task that only they have to perform next week.

The two fell behind early in the game, having missed the first flight from the Netherlands to Sweden and a train from the airport to a waterside amusment park, where the next task took place. By the time they got to the hay field and the final task, they were last. Their fate was sealed when the other four teams all found their flags, but the two gamely continued their hunt, with Gary rolling out hay bales and Matt shouting encouragement until they found success.

Back in Season 6, one team spent eight hours searching hay bales for flags and never did find one. This time, it was seven large, brightly colored flags eams were looking for in more than 150 human-sized hay bales. It was also a roadblock - a task just one team member had to perform.

The leaders, brother Sam and Dan, with dating couple Meghan and Cheyne just behind, blew their early leads when they spent hours unrolling and searching through the bales. Dan, who had seen the task in the previous race, kept urging Sam, who was doing the hefty unrolling, not to search so closely, but rather keep unrolling. His message: the needle would be obvious as bales unrolled.

But Sam wasm’t talking any advice from the sidelines and the two got into several heated exchanges. In the end they were fourth to arrive at the pit stop.

It was there that Dan broke down in tears, expressing remorse over the way he had shouted at his brother while Sam was working so hard.

Cheyne also let his partner do the heavy lifting - literally - and she finally broke down in tears after more than hour of unrolling hay bales.

Luck smiled on the Harlem Globetrotters this episode, perhaps because it was Flight Time’s birthday. Big Easy did the unrolling and after what seemed like just a few hay bales, found the first flag and two skipped off to the pit stop. They won a trip to Turks and Caicos for coming in first.

Married couple Brian and Erika also had some luck in finding the flag relatively quickly, coming in third, just behind Meghan and Cheyne.

In addition to the dreaded hay stack task, the teams had to ride the Frit Fall, a fairly tall drop tower in an amusement park, while searching for an arrow that would lead them to the next clue, win a Travelocity gnome in a ring toss and, in a salute to Alfred Nobel, build a bunker so they could safely explode dynamite.

The Singer Won a Temporary Court Order Barring Her First Husband from Selling a Home Video that Includes Honeymoon Footage

Jennifer Lopez arrives at the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards

Jennifer Lopez won a court order Monday barring her first husband from making their sex life public - at least for a day.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant issued a temporary restraining order blocking distribution of a proposed movie, “The J.Lo and Ojani Noa Story.” The order is in effect until a hearing on whether to extend it is completed. That hearing was scheduled to resume Tuesday.

“I’m going to fight this,” Noa said of the order.

Lopez sued Noa on Friday for $10 million, claiming he breached a prior confidentiality agreement by intending to sell a movie containing hours of home video footage, including some showing Lopez in sexual situations on their 1997 honeymoon.

The suit also claims invasion of privacy by “public disclosure of private facts which would be offensive and objectionable to a reasonable person and which is not of legitimate public concern.”

Lopez also sued Ed Meyer, Noa’s manager and producer of the proposed movie.

Meyer’s attorney, Frank Sanes Jr., unsuccessfully argued in court that his client was not bound by Noa’s confidentiality agreement and shouldn’t be subject to the restraining order.

The singer-actress wed Noa in 1997, but their marriage lasted just 11 months. They have fought two previous court battles.

Noa obtained a $125,000 settlement from Lopez in a 2004 suit that claimed she fired him without cause from a job as manager of her now-defunct Pasadena restaurant. As part of the settlement, he agreed not to disparage Lopez or sell private or intimate details about her or their relationship.

In 2007, Lopez won $545,000 in damages and attorney fees in another lawsuit that blocked Noa from publishing a ghostwritten tell-all book. Lopez claimed Noa had demanded $5 million to keep him from publishing the book.

According to court documents, the book claimed that Lopez had multiple affairs during her marriage to Noa, including one with current husband Marc Antony.

Lopez, 40, married Antony in 2004 and they have two children. She also was married to choreographer Cris Judd in 2001. The marriage lasted for nine months.

Plus: Emma Thompson removes her name from pro-Polanski petition

The fact that actor-director Mel Gibson romanced and even fathered a child with Oksana Grigorieva while still officially married to the mother of his seven other children fails to raise any red flags for his gal pal. It seems Grigorieva is so secure in her relationship with Gibson, she believes female admirers couldn’t even catch his eye.

“If he wanted to go down that road he probably would have done so by now,” a confident Grigorieva told Britain’s Glamour magazine. “And I think he is a very solid and faithful person.”

In April of this year, the actor’s wife of 29 years, Robyn Gibson, filed for divorce just weeks after beachside photos of Gibson and Grigorieva surfaced.

Thompson pulls name from pro-Polanski petition
She showed her support for Academy Award-winning director and convicted sex offender Roman Polanski by signing a petition urging Swiss authorities to free him, but actress Emma Thompson has since had a change of heart.

In an interview with The Independent, 19-year-old Exeter University student Caitlin Hayward-Tapp recalled how she convinced the star to remove her name from the pro-Polanski list.

“(Thompson) said she knows Roman Polanski and that she had had calls from friends asking her to sign the petition,” Hayward-Tapp revealed. “She knows what a terrible early life he (Polanski) had. (But) she said she had already been thinking a lot about the petition, as others had expressed their dismay at her signing it. We talked for 15 minutes and by the end she said she would get her name removed. She said regardless of the fact she knows him and the terrible things he has been through, a crime is a crime.”

Dad planned to profit from LiLo recordings
Lindsay Lohan’s publicity loving dad, Michael Lohan, claimed he hoped to help his embattled daughter when he recently released a series of secretly recorded telephone conversations. But according to the New York Post, Papa Lohan really hoped to help himself by profiting from the tapes.

“Michael initially asked for a large fee — six figures — for the tapes of Lindsay and (her mother, Dina Lohan), but he didn’t get any takers,” one source revealed to the paper. “Radar Online also refused to pay for the tapes, so in the end he agreed to a deal to release the recordings for no fee, but giving him the exposure he needs with a paid interview.”

Not so, or at least not completely so, the senior Lohan responded.

“(The six-figure goal) was a complete lie,” Michael Lohan told the Post. As for the paid interview, “That’s in the hands of my lawyers. They deal with that.”

Rubert Murdoch Accuses Google, Microsoft and Others of “Stealing” his Company’s Content

• Rupert Murdoch (AP Photo/David Karp)

Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon who has long accused Google of ripping off content from his newspapers, says his sites may soon disappear from the search engine’s listings.

Murdoch is chairman of News Corp., the newspaper, TV, and Internet empire that includes The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, 20th Century Fox, Fox News, and Hulu. He made the comments in an interview late last week with Sky News Australia. (See video below).

After Murdoch accused Google, Microsoft, and others of “stealing” his company’s content, he was asked why he just doesn’t pull his Web sites from Google’s search results.

“I think we will,” Murdoch responded. “But that’s when we start charging.”

Murdoch and other News Corp. execs have said that they intend to charge readers and viewers. In the past, the company’s sites have relied on advertising revenue.

Murdoch made it clear he’s no fan of the ad-supported model. “There are no news sites or blog sites making any serious money,” he said.

“What’s the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see in Google,” Murdoch continued. “The fact is there isn’t enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the Web sites profitable. We’d rather have fewer people coming to our Web sites but paying.”

When asked why he would buck the trend of offering free content, Murdoch said: “(The public) shouldn’t have had it free. I think we’ve been asleep.”

Google has said that it feels obligated to help media companies because it needs their content. That hasn’t stopped Murdoch and his staff from continuing to make hostile comments about the search engine. What News Corp. hasn’t done much of is follow up with action.

Is News Corp. trying to scare Google into making more concessions? Or is it just afraid to pull the trigger?

Mya shines with both 1970s style samba, traditional quickstep

After two weeks of double eliminations that have seen so-so dancers dropping like flies, “Dancing With The Stars” is down to five couples. Monday was the first night where every couple performed two complete individual dances — one ballroom dance, and one Latin dance styled in the manner of a particular era. The Latin round was a little stronger and a lot weirder than the ballroom round, but in the end, the longtime frontrunner was back at the head of the pack.

Mya and Dmitry Chaplin led off the ballroom round. While they agreed to ignore Len Goodman’s dislike of their fancy routines, they went with quite a conservative quickstep, with very little of the gimmickry and props he can’t stand, relying instead on technique. And for once, when Len professed disappointment, it was only over the fact that he couldn’t think of anything to be nasty about — a psych-out that worked on both the couple and the audience, which had to take back its lusty booing.

Aaron Carter has been the most unpredictable contestant and the most consistent at the same time: sometimes he’s good and sometimes he’s bad, but either way, viewers seemingly don’t care. Last week, even excellent judges’ scores didn’t keep him safe. His partner, Karina Smirnoff, is the show’s latest flu victim, so she and Aaron rehearsed in face masks. Their foxtrot was competent but dull, and Aaron remains a relentless purveyor of dance cheese in a shiny suit. The judges didn’t love it, even though they acknowledged that — as always — he sure was trying hard.