Tabs

Two local basketball stars committed to Division I schools in the last two days. Roman Catholic's Rakeem Brookins will attend Tulane University, and Frankford's Shaquille Duncan is headed to Niagara University. Brookins committed to Tulane late Tuesday night, and Green Wave coach Dave Dickerson flew up to congratulate his newest player in person yesterday. Roman Catholic coach Chris McNesby said Tulane had recruited Brookins hard since seeing him at the Reebok U camp at Philadelphia University in early July.

Vanessa Wright, a senior on the Haddonfield girls' cross-country team, recently gave an oral commitment to accept a full scholarship to run at North Carolina State University. The three-time Group 2 state champion turned down offers from Wisconsin, Iowa, West Virginia and Duke. Pennsauken athletic director Billy Wright, who is Vanessa's father, is pleased with his daughter's decision. "If you look at the last 10 years, North Carolina State and North Carolina have been ranked in the top 10," Billy Wright said.

Let's get one thing straight: Nicole Kidman did not hook up with her Cold Mountain costar, Jude Law. The Oscar-winning star, whose love life has been the subject of idle speculation by gossip mongers since her breakup with Tom Cruise, has won her second legal battle against British tabs who linked her with the English thesp. Yesterday, Kidman accepted an apology and undisclosed damages from News Group Newspapers, whose Sun tab said she had an adulterous affair with Law. (Law's wife, Sadie Frost, recently filed for divorce.

Earl Spencer's divorce battle picked up steam yesterday in Cape Town, South Africa, where he denied assertions by separated wife Victoria Lockwood that he began catting around months after their wedding. She's expected to contend that while she was hospitalized for five months for alcoholism and anorexia, he bedded 12 women, including fashion designer Chantal Collopy, who appeared in court Monday in support of Victoria, 32. "They are sensational allegations, which Charles Spencer doesn't have an opportunity to reply to until later in the proceedings," said a spokeswoman for Princess Di's bro, 33. "He will be strenuously denying them.

JUST IN TIME for his arrival in Philadelphia to film scenes for "Marley & Me," Owen Wilson has reportedly gotten engaged to Kate Hudson. At least something good came out of "You, Me and Dupree. " Although the engagement has not been confirmed by anyone official, it's the talk of the British tabs. Both News of the World and the London Sun yesterday said Kate was seen Thursday in Boston wearing a big diamond ring. Owen, whose past break-up with Kate led to a breakdown, allegedly proposed in Miami.

Pennsylvania Ballet publicist Luise Moskowitz got a free cab ride yesterday morning to the ballet's headquarters at Broad Street and Washington Avenue. When she tried to give the cabbie her fare, he said: "I hear the ballet's in trouble. This ride is on me. " For the last week, the staff's lunch order from the Broad Street Diner, just down the block from the headquarters, has been coming back with a bill totaling half the menu price. Friday, a carton of toilet paper and cleaning materials arrived at the ballet's studios as a donation from a hotel.

You may not believe everything you read, but you can trust Drew Carey, can't you? The sitcom star, having become a favorite of the supermarket tabloids ("Drew Carey's Amazing Potato Diet!"), says he's learned how to interpret what he reads in the tabs. We thought this would be helpful info to pass along. When the Globe, the Star, the Enquirer and the rest "write about relationships, they're usually wrong," Carey tells the putatively more reputable Playboy magazine in its March issue.

The Haverford Township teenager told the court he was positive of one thing: He looked both ways when he crossed a busy Delaware County street the night he was struck by an SUV driven by an assistant district attorney. Jake Vantrieste, now 15, suffered a broken leg and pelvis and had bleeding on his brain as a result of the incident on Nov. 4, 2011. Michael Donohue, 32, who prosecutors say left the scene, is charged with aggravated assault and related crimes. A former waitress at Sligo, a pub in Media, testified on Tuesday that Donohue ran up bar tabs totaling $120 that night.

The Playboy mansion isn't a playground, but a squalid, doggie-doo-infested dungeon. And Lord of the Manor Hugh Hefner ain't a nice guy, but a tyrannical monster who treats his girls, whom he plies with Quaaludes, like prostitutes. So claims former occupant Izabella St. James in a new tell-all excerpted by the Brit tabs. St. James says Hugh's girls had to live in dirty rooms with "disgusting . . . old worn and stained" mattresses. Hef's room also was filthy, she says, its carpet covered in dog poop.

Question: I tried to make a hotel reservation in London, Ontario, through Priceline. The site displayed three tabs. The first two tabs displayed the correct city, but when I switched to the "best deal" tab it automatically switched to London, UK. Unfortunately, at the time I did not realize that it had switched on me, and it found a nonrefundable hotel room in the wrong London. You can imagine my disappointment. I contacted customer service, but they wouldn't refund the room.