Shakira gave fans a glimpse of her famous hip shaking today in Barcelona as she shot a new music video in a variety of bikini tops. The Colombian singer showed off her toned tummy last month when she wore a neon pink tutu for a photo shoot, but today she was in black to ride a motorcycle before changing into her gold-sequined outfit. Shakira is in Europe now, but she'll start traveling across North America next month on tour. Busy Shakira has other ongoing projects as well, after recently launching her fragrance S by Shakira.

To see more photos of Shakira shooting her latest video, just read more.

   Shakira, admittedly, hasn’t got a lot of play on The Superficial, although in my defense, she never wears a bikini. (It’s a two-way, street, lady.) On that note, here she is shooting a commercial in Ibiza yesterday wearing some sort of bikini/tutu dealie that shows off her insanely toned abs. Seriously, I don’t know how Read More ...

The World Cup got underway in South Africa tonight, and it's already quite an amazing affair - will you be watching the games? Fergie and the Black Eyed Peas helped get things started while Alicia Keys kept her baby bump covered up with a chain-link top after showing it off at the airport with her fiance. John Legend also took the stage, and Shakira belted out the tournament's theme song, "Waka Waka," just one of the many WC-related tracks hitting the airwaves. Cristiano Ronaldo paid a visit to Nelson Mandela, and the Travolta family were some of the first A-list American celebrities to head to Johannesburg. John is the Qantas global ambassador and brought his daughter, Ella, as well as wife Kelly Preston, who was debuting her own pregnant stomach. We're getting the party started on the PopSugar Network as well - Tres has the hottest shirtless guys to expect and their beautiful WAGs, Buzz made their soccer dream team, and Geek has all the apps to keep you updated all month long.

To see more from the World Cup kickoff, read more.

Shakira has been all over the place these week, doing some extraordinary good deeds. Her main focus is education - but it’s not some vague interest or just some celebrity getting a quick press hit. Shakira is focused on the UN Millennium development goals, which have been a moving target for the past decade. Initially, the goals were basically some dreams for how the UN wanted to focus money in the developing world. Over the past decade, they’ve taken on more meaning, and they’ve become at once broader, and more focused. Just one example - someone like Jeffrey Saks began working with the UN development goals program to create UN Millennium Villages, and they’ve become a model of efficiency and self-sustaining localized economies.

Anyway, Shakira’s focus is with the UN Millennium education goals - namely, to ensure that every child in the world has access to primary school education by the year 2015. Shakira penned an interesting essay in The Economist about the subject:

Nine years ago, at the Millennium Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York, heads of state from around the world agreed on the Millennium Development Goals to reduce global poverty. One of the key goals was to ensure that by 2015 every child, boys and girls alike, would be able to complete primary school. This means that all those finishing primary school in 2015 will be entering school in 2010. It’s a daunting challenge, but if the G8, the G20 and other nations join together to establish a Global Fund for Education, we can make real progress towards this deadline.

Barack Obama promised America’s support for creating this $2 billion new fund just over a year ago. A similar model already exists. The fund will be an independent and innovative institution similar to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It will include representatives of civil society and developing countries as equal partners alongside donor nations in its governance structure. It will link funding to results—ensuring accountability in the way that funds are spent.

A lot is at stake. In the past two years over 600 schools in Afghanistan have been bombed, burned or shut down by extremists. Eighty percent of these have been schools for girls. Why? Because the education of a child is the most powerful form of national security—and that’s why it is such a threat to militants everywhere.

This isn’t theoretical to me. Growing up in Colombia after decades of conflict I saw that the people who are born poor, die poor. With rare exceptions, they never have the chance to improve their lives.

These people have difficulties finding decent jobs and making a decent life—and they often end up involved in doing things they never imagined. No child dreams of becoming a militant or a drug trafficker. But in developing countries sometimes life doesn’t give you any other option.

Education is the only way to break this cycle. But in today’s world there are still 72m children who are denied the opportunity to go to school and 226m adolescents who don’t attend secondary school.

My foundation in Colombia, Pies Descalzos (“Barefoot”), has proved that the poorest children can be educated. For less than $2 a day per child, our schools provide food, education and counselling services to thousands of students. Our schools help underprivileged children grow in sustainable ways and provide them with the tools they need to break out of the cycle of poverty.

Many people don’t realise that Colombia has one of the largest internally displaced populations in the world. Over 3m people in the country (out of a population of 49m) have fled their homes because of conflict. For this reason we decided that our programmes in Colombia should specifically focus on serving displaced children.

Our work in Colombia combines high-quality academic instruction with recreation, health care and psychological support. We operate six schools in three diverse regions of Colombia: Barranquilla, Quibdó and Altos de Cazucá. Over 5,000 students are directly served in our schools—but approximately 30,000 people benefit from our programmes. For example, in working to combat malnutrition we not only provide students with nourishing meals and evaluate their nutritional status, but we also provide their parents with critical information on health and nutrition.

In addition to physical-health services, the foundation’s programmes support emotional health through counselling and exposure to the arts as well as through advice for families and parenting classes.

We also support the broader community. On any given day our school buildings are hubs of activity—providing a range of services, including adult-literacy classes, youth-leadership development, access to libraries and computer training. Perhaps most importantly, we have also begun to form parent co-operatives focused on teaching parents and on income-generating activities aimed at ensuring that families are financially secure.

We are now in the process of taking this success story to other parts of the world through our non-profit Barefoot Foundation, based in the United States.

If our foundation can bring quality education to some of the poorest children in the world there is no reason why governments can’t do the same thing. Our schools in Colombia are proving each and every day that no matter where a child is from, no matter how poor children are, they can thrive if given the chance.

I refuse to believe that it isn’t possible to educate every child. By establishing a Global Fund for Education in 2010 we will invest in these children’s future—and help to secure our own.

[From Shakira’s essay in The Economist]

In addition to the essay, Shakira gave a speech at Oxford University on Monday, and made a call to “send 30,000 educators to Afghanistan, not 30,000 soldiers.” She also set her own goal: “That in 2010, world education became more important than world domination.” Um… Shakira, we’re not interested in world domination anymore. We’re just trying to get by at this point. But bless your heart. Though her goals are lofty, her heart, mind and wallet are in the right place!

The stars of last night's American Music Awards hit the red carpet before heading inside LA's Nokia Theatre for the main event. Janet Jackson kicked things off with an energetic eight minute performance, and the evening's first award then went to the Black Eyed Peas. The Black Eyed Peas went on to take the stage to do "Boom Boom Pow" with a special Nirvana twist. The show went on with performances from Carrie Underwood and Shakira, as well as from Jay-Z and Alicia Keys with "Empire State of Mind." Unfortunately not everyone stayed on their feet - both Jennifer Lopez and Adam Lambert took tumbles while singing.

There were other memorable performances, from Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and not to mention Whitney Houston's return to the stage before she received the International Award of Excellence. Jennifer Lopez had a beaming Marc Anthony in the crowd as she debuted her new single and showed off those customized Louboutins. Michael Jackson won multiple awards, and his brother Jermaine took the stage to accept the award on behalf of their family. Taylor Swift took home the most statues, though she wasn't there and the upset of the night might have to go to Gloriana who won breakthrough artist - make sure to check out the full list of winners. Kate Hudson joined her Nine costars Fergie and Nicole Kidman, though Kate did have a chance to share a special moment with Alex Rodriguez. We also had everything covered on the fashion and beauty ends, so make sure to check in with Fab and Bella!

LOTS more photos from the American Music Awards and backstage so read more.

Images include: Shakira, Kate Hudson, Jay-Z, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul, Alicia Keys, Adam Lambert, Chris Daughtry, Pete Wentz, Black Eyed Peas, Fergie, Kelly Clarkson, Keith Urban, Lady Gaga, Carrie Underwood, Mary J Blige, Nicole Kidman, Alex Rodriguez, Kristen Bell, Green Day, Nelly Furtado, Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna, Christian Slater, Samuel L Jackson, Seth Green, Leona Lewis, Timbaland, Toni Braxton, Keri Hilson