NEWSMAKERS: Paris Hilton starts cycle team

NEWSMAKERS

Paris Hilton starts cycle team

MADRID

Paris Hilton will now be hanging with bikers.

The hotel chain heiress who draws photographers wherever she goes will have her own team on the world motorcycling championship circuit.

She unveiled the SupermartXe VIP by Paris Hilton team in Madrid. It will compete in the 125cc category from 2011 to 2013. Hilton has agreed to attend at least five races next season.

“I can’t believe I have my own racing team! So cool! :)” Hilton posted on Twitter while at the launch.

Hilton wore a low-cut, pink and white, rhinestone-studded racing suit. Team riders Sergio Gadea and Maverick Vinales are expected to wear more-reserved outfits.

The team colors are pink, white and blue.

Shania Twain to marry executive

NASHVILLE, Tenn.

Country singer Shania Twain is engaged.

Twain’s manager Jason Owen confirmed Monday that Twain is engaged to business executive Frederic Thiebaud. Owen declined to comment further.

The news was reported first by Us Weekly.

Twain first confirmed in August 2009 that she was dating Thiebaud after her divorce from Robert “Mutt” Lange, who had an affair with Twain’s best friend and Thiebaud’s wife, Marie-Anne Thiebaud. She reached out to Frederic Thiebaud in the aftermath, and wrote on her website last year that she had found “a dear friend and true gentleman.”

No word on when or where the wedding will be. Twain, who has stepped away from the spotlight the last few years, has an autobiography due out in the spring and is scheduled to have her own show on Oprah Winfrey’s television network.

Cops probe theft from Jermaine Jackson

LOS ANGELES

Sheriff’s detectives say they are investigating the reported theft of $192,000 in jewelry and luggage from Jermaine Jackson.

Michael’s Jackson’s older brother reported the theft of watches, rings and other jewelry after returning to Southern California from a vacation in mid- September.

Detectives say there are no suspects and no clear leads.

Authorities say Jackson and his wife noticed the items were missing Sept. 18 and realized that one of the doors of their Calabasas home had been left unlocked.

The investigation was reported first by celebrity website TMZ.

Dog in Germany has 17 puppies

BERLIN

A dog in Germany has given birth to 17 puppies, leaving their owner thrilled but fatigued after having to feed them with a bottle for several weeks because their mother couldn’t cope with the demand.

Owner Ramona Wegemann said Monday she barely slept for more than a couple of minutes without interruption during about four weeks in an “exhausting” struggle to make sure all of the purebred Rhodesian Ridgeback puppies would survive.

She said when she was “finished feeding the last puppy, the first was hungry again.”

Wegemann’s dog Etana gave birth to eight female and nine male puppies Sept. 28 in Ebereschenhof, which is near Berlin.

At least five times a day, Wegemann gave the dogs a bottle with special milk because their mother’s nipples never could have coped with the demand, and when the puppies were not hungry, they wanted to be entertained, she said.

Wegemann said when dogs give birth to so many puppies, several of them die within the first week. “But all of our puppies survived. This is incredible and wonderful,” the 32-year-old added.

Vindicator wire services