Gossip

last updated 8 January 2015

Michelle Obama celebrated her 50th birthday with an exclusive, star-studded White House bash featuring performances by Beyoncé and Stevie Wonder. More than 300 guests—including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Samuel L. Jackson, Smokey Robinson, Magic Johnson, Ashley Judd, and Paul McCartney—watched pop star John Legend serenade the First Lady with “Happy Birthday,” before President Obama took to the stage to give a moving tribute to his wife, whom he said had made him a “better man.” A dance party then kicked off till the early hours, with the president doing the “Dougie” on the dance floor while clutching a martini glass. “I gotta tell you, it was literally a house party,” said NBC weatherman Al Roker. “It was a house party that happened to be in the White House.”

Dennis Rodman has checked into rehab following his recent disastrous, alcohol-fueled trip to North Korea. The former NBA star claims he was plied with drink from the minute he landed in the secretive state to stage an exhibition game, and that he was drunk when he made dismissive comments about Kenneth Bae, an American missionary who has been imprisoned in North Korea since 2012. Rodman was widely criticized for the trip, and his public rendition of “Happy Birthday” to dictator Kim Jong Un. “Dennis Rodman came back from North Korea in pretty rough shape,” said his agent. “The pressure that was put on him to be a combination ‘superhuman’ political figure and ‘fixer’ got the better of him.”

A recent police raid on Justin Bieber’s Los Angeles mansion allegedly found drugs strewn throughout the house, says TMZ.com. Sheriff’s deputies were searching the pop singer’s home as part of an investigation into the egging of a neighbor’s house, and came upon two large jars of marijuana, five empty codeine bottles, three bongs, and plastic foam cups that had reportedly been used for “sizzurp,” a street drug based on cough medicine. One guest, the rapper Lil Za, was charged with drug possession, but police said Bieber “has not been arrested, nor exonerated.”