Mandisa is eliminated on 'Idol'

This was the week ''American Idol" viewers decided to punish the few contestants who can truly sing. Mandisa is a gone pecan, as they say in some parts of the South; she's got soul, tons of soul, but that apparently doesn't help when you butcher a country song. Elliott and Paris rounded out the bottom three last night. Kellie and Ace, inexplicably, were safe -- and Taylor was spared, despite his frighteningly mellow version of ''Country Roads." Simon made squishy faces and shrugged. ''You're always going to be tied to the song you sing," he said. But on a week when ''Idol" conspired to put the nation to sleep with a string of dull country ballads, doesn't that mean almost all of them should go?

JOANNA WEISS

Tom Cruise, in an upcoming issue of Parade magazine, says that while growing up he faced bullies at home and at school. ''He was a bully and a coward," the 43-year-old actor (inset) says of his father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III. ''He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life -- how he'd lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang! For me, it was like, 'There's something wrong with this guy. Don't trust him. Be careful around him.' There's that anxiety." The star of the upcoming film ''Mission: Impossible III," also says he was harassed by his classmates while he was growing up. ''So many times the big bully comes up, pushes me. Your heart's pounding, you sweat, and you feel like you're going to vomit. . . . I don't like bullies." When Cruise was 12, his mother, Mary Lee, left his father and took Cruise and his sister, Lee Anne, with her, the magazine says. His parents divorced in 1974. Ten years later, Cruise says he reunited with his father, who was ''in the hospital dying of cancer, and he would only meet me on the basis that I didn't ask him anything about the past."

''The Da Vinci Code" is a smash in paperback, too. More than 500,000 copies of Dan Brown's historical thriller sold in its first week of paperback release, and an initial printing of 5 million has been upped to 6 million, publisher Anchor Books said yesterday. Brown's book has already sold more than 40 million copies worldwide in hardcover.

Eminem's dysfunctional relationship with wife Kim (inset) has hit another low -- he filed divorce papers yesterday, less than three months after remarrying her. The filing on behalf of Marshall Bruce Mathers III, Eminem's real name, was confirmed by Eminem's publicist, Dennis Dennehy, and two employees of the Macomb County clerk's office. The Grammy- and Oscar-winning rapper and Mathers remarried Jan. 14, a month after the couple announced they were getting back together. Their first marriage ended after two-plus years in October 2001 in an ugly legal fight that included a custody battle over their daughter, Hailie. Eminem, 33, and Mathers, 30, reconciled in late 2004.

A French screenwriter living in Jordan has sued Warner Bros. Pictures, George Clooney's production company, and writer-director Stephen Gaghan, alleging that their film ''Syriana" plagiarized entire scenes and characters from a script she wrote. Stephanie Vergniault is suing for $2.4 million and damages, said her attorney, Jasna Hadley Stark. A spokesman for Warner said, ''While we have not seen a copy of this suit, we believe it is without merit and will defend our position in court." Vergniault, a specialist on geopolitics in the Middle East, says she worked on a script titled ''Oversight" from 1997 to 2003, and that she registered it in France and copyrighted it in the United States in 2004.

J.K. Rowling (inset), well into her seventh and final ''Harry Potter" book, says the writing is going fine despite one annoying obstacle: the lack of paper. ''Why is it so difficult to buy paper in the middle of town?" the author, a resident of Edinburgh, lamented in a diary entry posted yesterday on her website, www.jkrowling.com. ''What is a writer who likes to write longhand supposed to do when she hits her stride and then realizes, to her horror, that she has covered every bit of blank paper in her bag? Forty-five minutes it took me, this morning, to find somewhere that would sell me some normal, lined paper. And there's a university here! What do the students use? Don't tell me laptops, it makes me feel like something out of the eighteenth century."

A judge has awarded actress Cameron Diaz undisclosed damages in a lawsuit against a photographer who took topless photos of her when she was 19 and later tried to sell them back to her for $3.5 million. Superior Court Judge Valerie Baker also dismissed a countersuit by photographer John Rutter. Diaz sued Rutter in July 2003 after the photographer tried to sell her the images before shopping them to others. Rutter was convicted last year of forgery, perjury, and attempted grand larceny. He has been serving a nearly four-year prison sentence.

Eric Clapton will close the European leg of his world tour with his first concert in Moscow's Red Square. Clapton's solo tour, which opens May 5 in Le Cannet, France, will travel through 14 countries, including England, Germany, Italy, and Norway. His show in Moscow is Aug. 3.

'It's going to help me in all phases of my life. It's definitely been an eye-opener.' Actor Brad Renfro, on his substance-abuse rehabilitation.

FROM WIRE REPORTS