Oprah Gets Unauthorized

PRAY FOR MERCY Winfrey • Oprah, watch your back: Celebrity-biography assassin Kitty Kelley has set her unauthorized sights on America's biggest sacred cow: Oprah Winfrey. In previous books, Kelley investigated Nancy Reagan's oral sex skills and George W. Bush's alleged cocaine use.

• Killer ride?: Police in Ipswich, England, are focusing their investigation into Jack the Ripper-style serial killings on a man with a blue BMW who was spotted with one of the victims before her death.

• Major(ity) surgery: Congress's Democratic majority maker Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota has undergone brain surgery after suffering what have been described as "stroke-like symptoms."

• More like "nasty, brutish, and short": Page Six reports that, while it "was short, sweet, and photogenic" while it lasted, handlers of legs-agape, Paps-smeared Britney Spears have nixed her new BFF Paris Hilton.