A judge has ruled that Mel Gibson’s conviction stemming from his notorious 2006 drunken driving arrest is being expunged.

The ruling Tuesday came after his lawyer had requested the dismissal. The actor-director successfully completed the terms of his three-year probation following the misdemeanor drunken driving arrest in which he made derogatory comments about Jews and women.

As part of his no-contest plea, Gibson was sentenced to three years of probation, paid about $1,600 in fines and had to attend Alcoholics Anonymous and other meetings.

Gibson has repeatedly apologized for making the derogatory comments about Jews to the sheriff’s deputy who arrested him in 2006 in Malibu, Calif.

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With her hair cropped and dyed black after her recent role as Joan Jett in the biopic about The Runways, Stewart looks very different from Bella Swan, the fresh-faced teen she portrays in Twilight, the story of a romance between a vampire and human girl.

Smoky make-up, leopardskin and lace ensure she smoulders in the striking shots by Craig McDean for Interview magazine.

During the interview, conducted by veteran actor Dennis Hopper, Stewart admits she is struggling to adapt to her sudden fame.

It was less than a year ago that she and leading man Robert Pattinson starred in the first Twilight film – adapted from Stephanie Meyer’s best-selling books.

There have been rumours of a real-life romance, although Stewart is in a relationship with actor Michael Angarano.

She tells Hopper: ‘I don’t talk to anybody about my personal life, and maybe that perpetuates (the attention), too.’

Followed by fans and photographers, Stewart finds it hard to live normally and has become ‘boring’ because she spends so much time in her hotel room while she is filming the sequels.

‘I’d like to take more walks after work instead of having to come back to my hotel room and not leave. So it can be boring,’ she said. ‘I don’t leave my hotel room – literally, I don’t.’

As well as her day-to-day-life, she feels the movie series has begun to dominate her conversation.

‘The sad thing is that I feel so boring because Twilight is literally how every conversation I have these days begins – whether it’s someone I’m meeting for the first time or someone I just haven’t seen in a while.

‘The first thing I want to say to them is, “It’s insane! And, as a person, I can’t do anything!” But then I think to myself, God damn it, shut the f**k up.’

Stewart is currently working on the third Twilight movie Eclipse after finishing the sequel New Moon earlier this year.

While New Moon sees Pattinson’s vampire character Edward Cullen attempt to leave his human girlfriend Bella to save her life, Eclipse sees her torn between her blood-sucking lover and her werewolf friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).

Stewart says she is finally getting a better understanding of Bella in the sequels although she finds her obsessive love for Edward disturbing.

She said: ‘I feel like I really know Bella now…

‘You have to question their (Bella and Edward’s) motivations – to watch two people so unhealthily devoted to each other.
‘I stand behind everything that they do. I have to justify it in my mind, or else I couldn’t play the character. But they are definitely not the most pragmatic characters.

‘The weirdest f**king themes run through this story – like dominance and masochism.’

Meyer’s Twilight books have sold over 25million copies worldwide and a further 20million copies in the U.S. and have been translated in 37 languages.

When the Twilight movie was released in the U.S. last November, it took an amazing $69million on its opening weekend.

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Atlanta police charged a strip club employee with voluntary manslaughter Saturday in the beating death of the former fiancé of the newest member of the reality television show The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Ashley “A.J.” Jewell, who was engaged to Kandi Burruss until last August, died of massive head injuries at Piedmont Hospital. He was fatally injured in a “one-on-one” fight with Fredrick Richardson Friday night, police said.

Richardson also was injured as the two exchanged blows outside the strip bar, the Body Tap Club, Friday night. Richardson was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital where he will remain until doctors say he can be discharged. Then Richardson will be taken to the Fulton County Jail, according to police spokesman Officer James Polite.

The hospital would not release Richardson’s condition, but police said he is conscious and alert.

Polite said detectives were still “trying to figure out [what happened]. We had a pretty good number of witnesses that are being cooperative.”

But the cause of the fight in the parking lot of the club in the 1200 block of Marietta Boulevard was still not known Saturday, Polite said.

Jewell was part-owner of Body Tap, a club popular with celebrities.

Burruss was flooded with condolences on her social networking pages on Twitter.com and MySpace.com.

Burruss thanked friends for their condolences and asked for prayers for Jewell’s six children.

But she asked to be left alone. “im just in one of those moods where i dont wanna talk, i dont wanna b held & told its gonna b ok. i just wanna cry myself 2 sleep, alone,” she wrote on a Twitter.com post.

She also posted that she had to get some rest before her uncle’s funeral on Saturday.

Kim Zolciak, a fellow “Housewives” castmate, said in a phone interview from California Saturday morning how “disgusted” she was that someone could take a life like this.

“My heart and prayers are with Kandi, AJ’s children and family,” she said. “I can’t imagine the loss they’re feeling. I’ll be there for my dear friend Kandi.”

Zolciak added, “I adored A.J. He will definitely be missed.”

Burruss, who has a daughter, joined the other Atlanta “housewives” this season as they focus on their status, their clothes and who’s arguing and why.

Jewell, as Burruss’ fiancé, appeared occasionally the show. In some episodes the 33-year-old Burruss argued with her mother over her relationship with Jewell.

Burruss is an award-winning singer-songwriter and a solo performer. She was a member of the now-disbanded R&B group Xscape.

According to an interview last month with the entertainment Web site Essence.com, Burruss and Jewell had taken a “hiatus” from their relationship but remained friends while they worked on their issues.

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A Chicago-area man arrested at O’Hare airport who is accused of taping surreptitious nude videos of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews was due to appear in federal court late Saturday morning, authorities said.

Michael David Barrett was arrested Friday night as he arrived on a flight from Buffalo, N.Y., the FBI said. He faces federal charges of interstate stalking for taking the videos, trying to sell them to celebrity Web site TMZ and posting the videos online, the FBI said in a statement.

Several TV networks and newspapers aired brief clips or printed screen grabs from the videos in July.

Andrews thanked FBI agents and federal prosecutors for their work on the arrest and said she hoped the case will eventually help others who have been similarly victimized.

“For my part, I will make every effort to strengthen the laws on a State and Federal level to better protect victims of criminal stalking,” she said in a statement early Saturday.

The charges against Barrett were filed in Los Angeles, where TMZ is based and where Andrews first became aware of the videos. She is identified in the federal complaint as E.A.

Andrews’ attorney, Marshall Grossman, said he called her Friday night with news of the arrest. She was greatly relieved, he said.

“I think she’s probably sleeping more soundly tonight than she has since these videos surfaced,” Grossman said.

FBI agents said seven of the eight videos posted online were taken through a modified door peephole while the 31-year-old Andrews was alone and undressed in hotel rooms in Nashville, Tenn., in September 2008.

FBI agents said they believe Barrett called many hotels to find out where Andrews was staying and requested a hotel room next to hers. Investigators said the eighth video was likely taken at another hotel, which Andrews couldn’t identify.

Agents said Barrett, 48, also made reservations at a Milwaukee hotel where she stayed in July 2008. They found her door’s peephole similarly rigged, but he didn’t check in at that hotel and the furniture in the room did not match furniture seen on the eighth video.

Barrett tried to sell the videos to TMZ, but an employee there informed Andrews’ attorneys, according to the complaint.

FBI agents matched information in the e-mail to Barrett, and also examined telephone records and credit card charges from Barrett’s Nashville hotel stay. Agents also concluded that the videos of Andrews were likely recorded from a cell phone camera.

Barrett sought to place Andrews under surveillance to harass and intimidate her, and to cause substantial emotional distress, the federal complaint said. He faces up to five years in federal prison if convicted.

A message left at a phone listing for a Michael D. Barrett in Westmont, Ill., wasn’t immediately returned Friday night.

Andrews has covered hockey, college football, college basketball and Major League Baseball for the network since 2004, often as a sideline reporter during games.

A former dance team member at the University of Florida, Andrews was named “sexiest sportscaster” by Playboy magazine in both 2008 and 2009. She has been referred to as “Erin Pageviews” because of the traffic that video clips and photos of her generate, and Playboy magazine named her “sexiest sportscaster” in both 2008 and 2009.

“This is clearly welcome news,” ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said of the arrest. “Our thoughts and support continue to be with Erin, who has demonstrated tremendous strength and determination.”

The federal complaint said Andrews felt ashamed and embarrassed and has had trouble sleeping and breathing because of the videos. She has also been worried that more secretly taped footage will surface, the complaint said.

Grossman said by telephone Friday night that the videos appeared to have been taped by a serial stalker who followed Andrews from city to city.

“He wasn’t an accidental tourist,” he said. “He had her in his sights.”

Grossman has said Andrews plans to file civil lawsuits against the person who shot the video footage and anyone who publishes the material. He said in a statement Saturday morning that Andrews has worked side by side with law enforcement and a private investigative firm to reconstruct events.

“Erin deserves significant credit for the progress made in solving this case,” Grossman said.

Andrews, in an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” last month, said she thought her career was over once the nude footage of her began circulating on the Internet.

“I kept screaming: ‘I’m done. My career is over. I’m done. Get it off. Get it off the Internet,’” she said as she remembered talking to her father. “They thought I was physically injured, (that’s) how bad I was screaming.”

Andrews returned to the air Sept. 3 as the sideline reporter for ESPN’s broadcast of South Carolina at North Carolina State. She is scheduled to work the Auburn-Tennessee game Saturday night in Knoxville, Tenn.

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Mike Tollin, the director of ESPN’s upcoming documentary, “Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?,” not only blames Donald Trump for the league’s demise, but doesn’t think he’s much of a movie critic, either. Tollin contends Trump ruined the upstart football league by making it go head-to-head against the NFL in the fall. After Trump bashed the film as “third-rate” on this page, Tollin responded, “The camera doesn’t lie. It shows Trump to be rude, impatient, repetitive and boorish. I can’t imagine he had the attention span to even watch the whole thing.” The movie premieres on Tuesday, Oct. 20.

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If you are a worldwide superstar, you find fans in the most unlikely of places.

But whether Rihanna expected an Italian monk to be an autograph hunter is quite another matter.

The singer is known for her raunchy, body-baring stage outfits but this priest didn’t look at all offended by the Disturbia singer.

And she looked happy to be snapped with the unnamed monk in Venice, Italy, where she was attending the wedding of her manager Marc Jordan.

Rihanna, 21, who went to yesterday’s ceremony without a plus one, wore a plum purple and black dress and large earrings.

She watched as her manager exchanged vows with new-wife Katharina Harf in a ceremony in the city and party on a boat.

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He did it recently when a cell phone call interrupted a preview performance of “A Steady Rain,” the Broadway play that stars Jackman and Daniel Craig.

The moment captured on an amateur video shown by the TMZ.com Web site appears to have been recorded by someone in the audience.

It shows Jackman breaking character to tell the owner of the ringing cell phone, “You want to get that?” as the audience erupts in cheers. As the ringing persists, Jackman pleads: “Come on, just turn it off.” He then paces the stage of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, waits about a minute for the ringing to stop and the play resumes.

Producers of “A Steady Rain” declined to comment.

The interruption occurred during an intense moment in the play, when Jackman’s character, a Chicago policeman, reveals haunting memories.

A customary loudspeaker announcement reminds theatergoers to turn off their phones. Since the incident, ushers who seat patrons and pass out playbills at Schoenfeld are also instructing patrons to silence their phones.

“A Steady Rain,” a taut drama about the relationship between two policemen, opens Tuesday for a limited engagement through Dec. 6. The play by Keith Huff already has proven to be a potent box-office winner, playing to capacity audiences since it began previews on Sept. 10.

Jackman won a Tony Award in 2004 for his performance as Peter Allen in the musical “The Boy from Oz.” Craig, filmdom’s latest James Bond, is making his Broadway debut.

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