Going for the golden rule

As the Summer Games open in Beijing, actress activist Mia Farrow is Webcasting her own “Darfur Olympics” from a refugee camp on the barren Sudan-Chad border, aiming to shame China into using its influence with Khartoum to end the Darfur conflict.

Human rights groups have been using the Beijing Olympics to highlight accusations that China’s close ties to the Khartoum government are helping fuel the bloodshed in Darfur.

At the same time as today’s opening ceremony in Beijing, Farrow will post footage from one of the camps in Chad where fleeing Darfurians have taken refuge.

The Webcast is scheduled to include refugee children playing sports and music by the likes of R.E.M., Bette Midler and Taleb Kweli.

Each day for the first week of the Beijing games, Farrow will post new Webcasts with “voices from the camps,” including interviews with women and children.

“With China underwriting the suffering in Darfur and hosting the Olympic games at home, there is an incongruity that everyone attending the game, participating in the games and covering the games can’t ignore,” she says.

A real whitewash?

Cosmetics giant L’Oreal denies lightening Beyonce’s skin tone in an ad in the current issues of Elle, Allure and Essence magazines.

Celebrity gossip Web site TMZ posted side-by-side photos comparing the ad with a photo of Beyonce with noticeably darker skin.

Ushered back in

Usher’s mother is back as his manager following a much-publicized split.

Jonnetta Patton had managed her son’s singing career since he was a teen star, but he broke that off last year.

Chicks and storks

On the musical matrimony beat, Dixie Chick Emily Robison and singer husband Charlie Robison have divorced following nine years of marriage and three children.

But “American Idol” runner-up Bo Bice and his wife have welcomed a second son, Caleb.

Two hunks-a bouncing baby

Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’ little girl, is the latest expectant mom to join the celebrity twin parade, due to deliver this fall.

Mom Priscilla Presley points out that twins run in the family “on Elvis’ side and on my side, too. I have twin brothers, and then, of course, Elvis had a twin brother (who died at birth).”

Birds of a feather …

Elsewhere on the Elvis front, the King’s favorite performance costume – a white jumpsuit with peacock designs – sold for $300,000 Thursday, the most ever at auction for a piece of Presley memorabilia.

And thanks to technology, Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride , LeAnn Rimes, Gretchen Wilson, Wynonna Judd, Sara Evans, Amy Grant and Anne Murray will join him on the upcoming “Elvis Presley Christmas Duets.”

The birthday bunch

Actress Esther Williams is 87. Country singer Mel Tillis is 76. Actor Dustin Hoffman is 71. Actress Connie Stevens is 70. Actor Keith Carradine is 59. News anchor Deborah Norville is 50. Guitarist The Edge (U2) is 47. Singer J.C. Chasez (’N Sync) is 32.