LOS ANGELES – Selena Gomez conjured five wins at the Teen Choice Awards.

The star of “Wizards of Waverly Place” was selected as choice TV actress, female hottie and music group with her band The Scene. The group also was awarded the choice single trophy for “Who Says” and love song for “Love You Like a Love Song,” which the 19-year-old actress-singer performed at Sunday’s ceremony at Universal Studios Hollywood’s Gibson Amphitheatre.

“This is for all of you guys,” Gomez told the screeching crowd. “This isn’t mine.”

Other early winners included Ellen DeGeneres as choice comedian, Kellan Lutz and Ashley Greene from “The Twilight Saga” as choice scene movie stealers and Ashton Kutcher as choice romantic comedy movie actor for “No Strings Attached.” Before leading the crowd in a sing-along of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,” Kutcher provided the crowd with some topical advice: “Don’t ever charge anything on a credit card if you don’t already have the money in the bank to pay for it.”

Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am kicked off the fan-favorite ceremony, which honors celebrities in TV, film, music and sports. Others expected to sail away with surfboard-shaped trophies Sunday include multiple nominees like “The Vampire Diaries,” “Pretty Little Liars” and Taylor Swift, who will be honored with the Ultimate Choice Award.

Rapper arrested for drug possession, including ecstasy

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MIAMI – Grammy-winning OutKast rapper Big Boi has been arrested in Miami on charges of illegally possessing drugs including ecstasy and Viagra pills.

The rapper, whose real name is Antwan Patton, was charged with three counts of possession of a controlled substance and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia on Sunday. According to the Miami-Dade County Corrections website, the 36-year-old Patton was also carrying MDMA, which is the main ingredient in Ecstasy.

The rapper was booked around 1:30 p.m. on $16,000 bond.

Phone and email messages were left for Big Boi’s publicists.

Big Boi is best known as half of the groundbreaking rap duo OutKast, which includes Andre 3000. The Atlanta-based group won six Grammys and churned out six platinum-plus albums, including “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” which sold over 10 million copies.

Nyad starts 103-mile Cuba-to-Florida swim

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HAVANA – American endurance swimmer Diana Nyad jumped into Cuban waters Sunday evening and set off in a bid to become the first person to swim across the Florida Straits without the aid of a shark cage.

Nyad, 61, expressed confidence before starting off. She said the still air and flat water were perfect conditions for her attempt to make a 103-mile, 60-hour swim from Havana to the Florida Keys.

“The adrenaline’s flowing now,” Nyad said at a jetty in western Havana as she looked at the water. “… I don’t believe much in destiny, but you have to take what you can get, and this is what I dreamed of — a silver platter.”

She changed into a black swimsuit and blue swim cap and an assistant greased her shoulders and armpits to prevent chafing in the salty water. Nyad played “Reveille” on a bugle, thanked several dozen well-wishers who came to see her, then jumped feet first into the sea.

She swam away just before sunset, escorted by kayaks and several larger boats carrying her support team.

Nyad said it’s been a lifelong dream and she hopes her feat, if successful, will inspire people to live vigorously during their golden years.

She first had a go at this crossing as a 28-year-old back in 1978, when she swam inside a steel shark cage for about 42 hours before sea currents put an end to that attempt.

The next year she set a world record for open-water swimming without a shark cage, charting 102 miles from the Bahamas to Florida before retiring from competitive endurance swimming.

 


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