RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) – A group of 26 beauty contestants were prevented from watching the Brazil football team train this week.

The young women were said to be particularly keen on getting a glimpse of this year’s favourite to land the European Footballer of the Year award, AC Milan’s Kaka.

However the backroom staff of coach Dunga did not allow them access to the training facilities, though they remained behind the perimeter fence shouting encouragement to the players.

Brazil meet Peru in Lima on November 17 and then Uruguay in Sao Paolo on November 21 in South American World Cup qualifiers.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former Miss USA Tara Conner, who nearly lost her title for alcohol abuse, is joining several other beauty queens on a new MTV reality show that follows what happens to the pageant winners when their crowns come off.

The eight-part series “Pageant Place,” which debuts on Wednesday, repackages the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA champions as TV roommates for the kind of behind-the-scenes spectacle that made hits from shows like “Big Brother” and “The Osbournes.”

The new series follows Miss Universe Riyo Mori from Japan, Miss USA Rachel Smith of Tennessee and two Miss Teen USA winners — Katie Blair and Hilary Cruz — as they share a high-rise apartment in New York City for one year.

Acting as their minder and “unofficial peer advisor” for the show will be none other than Conner, the 2006 Miss USA queen who was almost forced to give up her crown over revelations of her underage drinking.

Real estate mogul Donald Trump, co-owner of the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants, publicly rebuked Conner for her behavior but let her keep her tiara when she agreed in January to enter a rehabilitation program. Conner later admitted to struggling with both alcoholism and cocaine abuse.

“Pageant Place” press materials say the four beauty queen roommates will “have a now sober Tara to guide them away from the temptations and unrelenting attention that led to her notoriety when she was Miss USA.”

And if that’s not enough, Trump himself will be “dropping by to check in and make sure they all stay on track,” according to the press release from MTV, a unit of Viacom Inc..

The show will no doubt help focus some much-needed attention of younger viewers on U.S. beauty pageantry at a time when such contests have suffered a ratings decline, prompting the Walt Disney Co.’s ABC to give up the Miss America telecast in 2005.

Earlier this year, Trump renewed his deal with rival network NBC, controlled by the General Electric Co., to carry the annual Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants for three more years.

More recently, NBC agreed to bring Trump’s corporate reality show “The Apprentice” back to prime time for a seventh edition early next year. This time, the show will feature celebrity contestants raising money for various charities.

LA PAZ (Reuters) – The winner of a Bolivian beauty contest for indigenous women was stripped of her title moments after her coronation when judges noticed she was wearing false plaits, organizers said Saturday.

The Miss Cholita Pacena pageant, held in the Andean city of La Paz late Friday, seeks to instill pride in indigenous women who choose to wear the traditional dress of wide skirt, bowler hat and long plaited hair.

But doubts over whether the winner was a genuine Cholita Pacena — the name for Indian women from La Paz — led judges to strip her of her victor’s sash and call for a rerun, said pageant organizer Walter Gomez from La Paz’s city government.

The judges “disqualified the winner because they realized she didn’t have plaits, that the plaits she had were false,” he told Reuters. “Having short hair means they don’t live like Cholitas.”

Friday’s contest was a far cry from the mainstream beauty contests that are popular in Bolivia, in which the South American nation’s indigenous majority are under-represented.

Not a bikini in sight, the toughest test for the 14 contestants was making a speech in the native Aymara language to prove their Cholita credentials.

It is not the first time scandal has hit the pageant. In 2004, the winner caused a stir after her coronation by saying she did not normally wear traditional dress.

MADRID (Reuters) – The Miss Spain beauty contest has changed its rules to allow mothers to compete after its decision to dethrone a 22-year-old beauty queen when it emerged she had a child met with national outrage in February.

Angela Bustillo, who has a toddler son, won the title of Miss Cantabria, a region on Spain’s northern coast, in January but organisers disqualified her citing rules that contestants cannot have children.

The decision sparked widespread outrage in the Spanish press and expressions of support for the dethroned queen from feminist organisations to the head of the Cantabrian local government.

“I knew what it said in the contest conditions, but it seemed so absurd. I thought it must be something left over from the 1970s that they had forgotten to bring up to date,” Bustillo, a former supermarket worker, said at the time.

OKLAHOMA CITY – Miss America can add crime fighter to her resume. Lauren Nelson recently went undercover with police in New York for a sting targeting sexual predators. Officers with Suffolk County’s computer crimes unit created an online profile of a girl that included photographs of Nelson as a teenager.

“I got to chat online with the predators and made phone calls, too,” Nelson said by phone from Atlantic City, N.J. “The Suffolk County Police Department was there the whole time.”

The operation was filmed for a segment of “America’s Most Wanted” that will air Saturday on Fox. Police spokesman Tim Motz said the operation was ongoing and declined to comment Tuesday evening.

At least four men were arrested and face charges, said Avery Mann, a spokesman for the show. Another six men agreed to meet Nelson, of Lawton, Okla., he said.

Nelson, 20, posed as a young teen online and went into chat rooms, where she said men would begin sending her instant messages asking her how old she was and where she lived.

“I would say I’m a female from Long Island. Sometimes they would say, ‘You’re too young, sorry,’ which is exactly what needs to happen, but some would continue chatting.

“It would only take a matter of time before it got pretty explicit.”

Nelson then arranged to meet the men at a home in Long Island, where police and camera crews were waiting.

“The story was that they knew I was young, and I told them I was cutting school to meet with them,” Nelson said. “I stood outside on the porch, and I would say, ‘Hi’ to them and wave them inside.”

Once she entered the home with the suspect, Nelson said, she left the room, and police and “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh confronted the suspect.

“That part was very scary, but the police were all over the place,” Nelson said. “I was nervous, of course, but it was a very controlled environment, very safe.”

Art McMaster, president and CEO of the Miss America Organization, said he initially was hesitant about Nelson participating in the sting, but agreed after speaking with Nelson’s father and the producers of “America’s Most Wanted.”

“We came to the agreement that as long as she was safe and wanted to do this, we’d be behind her,” McMaster said.

Nelson, whose platform issue is Internet safety for children, said she was eager to participate.

“As many as we caught on that day, there are a lot more out there,” she said. “It’s nice to know that they were chatting with police officers and me rather than a young girl.”

REYKJAVIK (AFP) – An alternative beauty pageant to be held in a remote Icelandic town will reward contestants’ wrinkles, saggy breasts and other bodily imperfections and hopes to challenge Western ideas of beauty, organisers said Wednesday.

“Anyone can make the rules about what beauty is, we want to change the rules,” one of the contest’s organisers, Matthhildur Helgadottir, told AFP.

“We think it’s just coincidence if you have big breasts. How come this is beautiful? We are trying to show how ridiculous this is,” Helgadottir said.

The contest, scheduled for April 18, will be held in the town of Isafjoerdur, population 3,000, in the northwest of Iceland.

Men and women were welcome to register as contestants and while there was a minimum age of 20, there was no upper age limit.

The only other stipulation was that contestants had not gone under the plastic surgeon’s knife for cosmetic reasons.

Prizes were as yet undecided but the “fun and honour” of taking part would be sufficient reward for contestants, according to Helgadottir.

Organisers remained undecided on how to rate participants.

“Maybe this (the alternative contest) is research, a way of understanding them (beauty pageants).”

The idea for the contest emerged while Helgadottir — a self-confessed feminist — was talking with friends in an Isafjoerdur pub.

As of Wednesday five people, three women and two men, had registered to take part.

Helgadottir remained optimistic that many more would sign up once news of the competition spread.

NEW YORK, Dec 14 (Reuters Life!) – Miss USA 2006 is in danger of losing her crown due to bad behavior, organizers of the annual beauty pageant said on Thursday.

Property magnate and TV “reality” series star Donald Trump, who owns the Miss USA and Miss Universe contests, will decide next week whether or not Tara Conner would keep the title, they said.

“The Miss Universe Organization and Mr. Donald J. Trump will be evaluating her behavioral and personal issues to see what we can do to work with her, and what we will do about her reign going forward,” Paula Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization, said in a statement.

“Mr. Trump will make a determination and announcement within the coming week.”

A spokeswoman for the contest declined to give any details on Conner’s misbehavior or comment on online reports about incidents of inappropriate conduct at New York bars.

“Miss USA is a role model. There are moral rules that we go over with them,” she said, but declined to outline the rules under which the winners accept the title.

Conner, who turns 21 this month, won the Miss USA contest in April this year, becoming the first woman from Kentucky to win the crown.

She has been competing in pageants since age 4.

Under beauty contest rules, if Conner were removed, the first runner-up would assume her duties. She is Miss California USA, Tamiko Nash.

Conner would not be the first beauty queen to be stripped of her title.

Last month Miss Great Britain Danielle Lloyd lost her crown for reportedly dating soccer star Teddy Sheringham before he judged the contest and also for agreeing to pose for Playboy magazine.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Miss Israel has been given permission not to carry her assault rifle during service in the Israeli army because she says it bruises her legs.

Reigning beauty queen Yael Nezri, a private who recently completed basic training, said the bruises were making it difficult for her to model in photo shoots.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Nezri, 18, had been granted an exemption by her commanders during her two-year army stint.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – A plucky Australian schoolboy who asked a former Miss Universe to his school dance, only to be rebuffed, has finally had his dream date over lunch.

Daniel Dibley, 17, needed a partner for the school dance in the Australian country town of Bathurst, west of Sydney, and he decided to aim high.

He wrote to Australia’s best-known beauty queen, Jennifer Hawkins, to ask her to the dance, and was stunned when the 2004 Miss Universe accepted.

But in a decision that would break a schoolboy’s heart, Hawkins later pulled out of the date because the overwhelming publicity had overshadowed plans for the end-of-year dance, which is for students in their final year of high school.

Instead, the Seven television network said Hawkins visited Dibley’s Bathurst High School on Tuesday for a private lunch date with Daniel, and to speak to the school assembly, where she apologized for all the fuss.

“I didn’t want you guys to think I didn’t want to come to Bathurst, or I didn’t want come to the formal (dance),” Hawkins, now a television presenter, told the school assembly.

“I did. It just became too big. I just wanted a low-key thing.”