What has Cassandra Ponti been up to?

I wonder if this TV host remembers the victims of the Ultra massacre during All Saints' Day? It seems that all this host cares about is to seek sympathy for his misfortune after his wife filed for annulment. He even has the gall to project himself as the underdog in the case. I also pity the female TV host who has been threatened by people close to the male host to keep her mouth shut about what she knows on pain of being fired.

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Former Pinoy Big Brother housemate Cassandra Ponti has gotten used to living out of the limelight. She has had a house built in her hometown Davao City from her earnings. She refuses to disclose how much her dream house is worth, but Cass is proud to say that she herself designed and landscaped it.

It took three years to finish the house. "I began to build it when I was still modeling," she told me when I bumped into her in Bambi Fuentes' salon in Quezon City. It has seven bedrooms, three comfort rooms and has an American motif. She herself bought the furnishings.

The lot is her mom's, which she inherited from Cass' lola. Her lola was still alive when work on the house began, Cass says. "I wasn't earning a lot at that time. But after Pinoy Big Brother I was able to raise enough money to speed up the construction."

Her mom and older brother live in the house, looking after it while Cass works in Manila. Cass rents a flat at the President's Tower for P15,000 a month.

In Manila she drives around in a brand new car worth almost P1.5 million.

She had the car for just three days when she crashed it along Edsa. She says she stepped on the gas and not on the brake. "The insurance company shouldered the repair," she says.

She bought the car on an 18-month installment plan. Each month she pays P35,000.

She can afford the niceties because she has a lot of projects coming her way. She's cast in "Enteng Kabisote" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll" (LRT episode). In Enteng, Cass plays a policewoman alongside Vic Sotto. She says she has a number of action scenes in the movie, but she refuses to have a double. In "Shake, Rattle and Roll," Cass is joined by Manilyn Reynes and Keempee de Leon. The two films are entered in the Metro Manila Film Festival in December.

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It was a red-letter day for all the 1,000 or so kids who attended the grand launch of the Robby Rabbit Fun Club at the Festival Supermall recently. The children who lined up to have their faces painted won Robby Rabbit gifts like notebooks, backpacks and face towels. There were fun games and they got to listen to the precocious Star Magic kids sing, dance and model Robby Rabbit apparel for boys and girls.

The excitement level rose when Robby Rabbit endorser Antonia "Anya" Babao arrived with mom Ms. Tintin Bersola and dad Juluis Babao. Steven L. Ching, CEO of Characters Unlimited, the manufacturer of Robby Rabbit, handed Anya her fun club certificate of membership. "I want Anya to grow up with good values. That's why I enlisted her as the first member of the RR Fun Club," Tintin said.

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Material Girl Madonna's quest to adopt a 13-month-old baby from Malawi has been running into more twists and turns than a Hollywood psycho thriller.

Madonna was roundly criticized when she flew the child, David Banda, out of Malawi to London last month. The boy's father was also claiming he never fully approved of the adoption. Then Malawian rights groups are challenging the adoption in court.

For the moment the pop diva has been granted a temporary custody order for the boy, but the controversy is far from over.

The rights groups claim that Malawi's government bent the rules by allowing Banda to be flown out of the country just days after Madonna first applied to adopt him. Under Malawian law, parents who want to adopt usually face an 18-month period of monitoring.

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Another superstar who has a knack for adopting kids, Angelina Jolie, is also in trouble. A news report says the head of a charity formerly linked to Jolie's conservation project in Cambodia has threatened to sue her in a row over missing money.

Mounh Sarath, director of Cambodian Vision in Development (CVD), claims that the actress had broken funding promises and accused him of stealing money meant for her work in Cambodia. CVD had co-managed the $1.5-million Maddox Jolie project, named after her five-year-old Cambodian son.

Angelina shot "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" at Cambodia's famed Angkor Wat temple in 2001. She and husband Brad Pitt have one other adopted child, Zahara, and recently Angelina gave birth to a baby boy Shiloh.