Oprah Winfrey and several schoolgirls allegedly abused at her academy in South Africa are expected to testify in a trial over a defamation lawsuit brought by the school’s former headmistress, whose performance Winfrey criticized.

When news of the scandal broke in 2007, Winfrey said she had “lost confidence” in headmistress Nomvuyo Mzamane and was “cleaning house from top to bottom.” Mzamane, who said she didn’t know about any sexual abuse, had trouble finding another job afterward.

The case is headed for a two-week jury trial in federal court in Philadelphia starting March 29.

At a final pretrial hearing Friday, Winfrey lawyer Chip Babcock said minors do not typically testify in open court in South Africa. The girls, now 14 and 15, may seek to testify through videotaped depositions, especially given the sensitive nature of their testimony, Babcock said.

“We’re going to see how the kids get acclimated here, and how (their) parents feel about things,” Babcock told U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno.

A dorm matron at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls has been charged with abusing six students. Winfrey has called the allegations crushing given her own stated history of childhood sexual abuse.

Winfrey plans to defend her remarks about Mzamane on free speech and other grounds, arguing that she merely voiced her opinions. Mzamane’s lawyers, who note Winfrey’s huge media reach, contend listeners would think they were based on facts she gleaned from the school’s internal investigation.

“To this day, Ms. Winfrey admits that she has no evidence that Ms. Mzamane knew about any claims of sexual abuse at the academy while she was headmistress there, much less that she tolerated or covered up such abuse,” Mzamane’s lawyers wrote in their trial memorandum.

Winfrey was not in court Friday, but as the named defendant must attend the trial each day. She has rearranged the taping of her Chicago-based daily TV talk show, according to her lawyers, who asked the judge to try to keep the trial from dragging beyond two weeks.

Robreno agreed to hold court on Saturdays if necessary. Several witnesses are coming from South Africa on visas linked to the trial schedule.

Mzamane, born in Lesotho, formerly worked at the private Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, and was living in the city when she filed suit two years ago. She earned $150,000 a year as the head of Winfrey’s academy.

Winfrey hopes to show that the school leader failed to act on myriad complaints about dorm matron Tiny Virginia Makopo, who is accused of sexually and physically abusing students. Makopo has pleaded not guilty to 14 charges.

Winfrey, in court papers, said she had planned to hire nurses to serve as dorm matrons for the 150 seventh- and eighth-grade girls who were selected from impoverished backgrounds to attend her school.

Mzamane instead hired eight young women from a local company called Party Design, she said.

“These young women were later found to be totally unqualified to handle the position, something Ms. Mzamane had been warned about,” Winfrey’s lawyers wrote.

As the school’s inaugural year unfolded, Makopo attacked another dorm parent, injured three people while driving a golf cart after a champagne party at Mzamane’s home and retaliated rather than apologize to girls who complained of mistreatment, while Mzamane did little or nothing, Winfrey’s lawyers allege in their trial memo.

Forbes last year listed Winfrey’s net worth at $2.7 billion. However, for trial purposes, lawyers have stipulated the amount at $1.2 billion.

The academy now serves about 330 girls.

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey is expected to spend two weeks defending herself at trial in a defamation case linked to the sex-abuse scandal at her girls school in South Africa.

A federal judge this week refused to dismiss the suit filed by Winfrey’s ex-headmistress, paving the way for a March 29 trial in Philadelphia.

The billionaire talk show host, as a named defendant, must be in court and has rearranged her TV production schedule to do so, her lawyers said in a recent court filing. She also appears likely to be called as a witness.

After the abuse complaints surfaced in 2007, Winfrey said she had “lost confidence” in headmistress Nomvuyo Mzamane and was “cleaning house from top to bottom.”

A dorm matron who worked under Mzamane was later charged in South Africa with abusing six students.

The judge found that Winfrey made both Mzamane and the dorm parents appear “culpable” by telling parents, “I’m going to find a new head of the academy for the school. … Dorm parents are gone, (Mzamane) is gone.”

The statement suggests Mzamane had a role in the mistreatment of the students, “which clearly would tend to ‘blacken’ plaintiff’s reputation or injure her in her profession,” U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno wrote in a 128-page opinion issued Monday.

Winfrey was in South Africa on Tuesday visiting the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, near Johannesburg, according to her production company, Harpo Productions. She opened the $40 million school for impoverished girls amid great fanfare in January 2007 and recruited Mzamane, a Lesotho native, from a private school in Philadelphia.

Winfrey’s lawyers sought to dismiss the suit on grounds the remarks she made at an Oct. 20, 2007 meeting with parents and at a Nov. 5, 2007 press conference reflected only her opinions.

But Robreno said a listener could infer she based the comments on facts gleaned from the school’s internal investigation.

Winfrey herself acknowledged the power of her words when she said in a deposition that she thought only two people – President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle – wield more influence in the media, Mzamane’s lawyers said in a brief.

“Oprah and Harpo await the opportunity to present the case in court,” her lawyer, Chip Babcock of Houston, said Tuesday in a statement issued through Harpo, which is also a named defendant.

In a brief filed Friday, Winfrey’s lawyers wrote that any damage Mzamane suffered was by her own conduct, “including presiding over a school where serious allegations of child abuse were made against the dorm parents.”

Babcock successfully defended Winfrey in a 1998 libel trial in Texas, when cattle ranchers sued her and a vegetarian activist over a talk-show segment on mad cow disease. A disgusted Winfrey famously swore off hamburgers in the episode.

She spent six weeks in Amarillo for the trial, sometimes filming her daily show from the Texas Panhandle.

Winfrey’s lawyers tried to move the pending defamation trial to Chicago, where her show is based, but Robreno said it could be tried in Pennsylvania, where Mzamane lived when she filed suit in 2008 and where her reputation is perhaps most relevant. Mzamane is seeking more than $250,000.

“Winfrey indicted Ms. Mzamane for creating an atmosphere where the students’ voices were silenced,” Mzamane’s lawyers said in their brief. “Simply put, the only reasonable inference to be drawn from the press conference was that Ms. Mzamane was let go because, at best, she disregarded claims of sexual abuse at (the school).”

Mzamane previously worked at the Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia and returned to the area when Winfrey declined to renew her $150,000-a-year contract in December 2007. She said she could not find work afterward, but apparently took a job at another school in South Africa in September 2008, according to court documents.

Her lawyer, Timothy McGowan, said he was ready for trial but otherwise declined comment.

Winfrey’s school now has about 330 students.

Forbes magazine listed Winfrey’s net worth last year at $2.7 billion.

Oprah Winfrey is facing legal action from bosses at an exercise company who have filed suit against her Harpo, Inc firm over a workout program.

Officials at Unicus Performance Training (UPT) filed a lawsuit this week, alleging they were never paid for developing an exercise scheme for the media mogul’s company.

UPT bosses claim they were hired by executives at Winfrey’s firm to put together a corporate fitness regime, the O Fitness Challenge, specifically for Harpo employees between August 2008 and March 2009.

According to the legal documents, UPT chiefs invoiced Harpo for $63,000 but were told their contract had been terminated after they allegedly violated a confidentiality agreement by sending out a mass email promoting an upcoming appearance on Winfrey’s radio show.

UPT owners Dina Castillo and Frank Nunez claim Harpo’s General Counsel and Vice President William L. Becker later told them their services had been “voluntary.”

Castillo and Nunez are seeking unspecified damages “to compensate Unicus for the fair value of the services performed.”

Whatever Oprah Winfrey’s favorite things are this year, she’s keeping it to herself.

Viewers may have seen the last of her ‘Favorite Things’ episodes, the Huffington Post reports.

During the annual Thanksgiving week show, which first aired seven years ago, Oprah sent audience members home with items she plugged as her “favorite things.” The gifts often were worth thousands of dollars – and the episodes became notorious for the weeping, screaming, hyperventilating frenzy into which they whipped the audience.

The show is absent from this week’s lineup, and a spokesperson for Oprah’s Harpo productions told the Huffington Post, “We have no plans this season for a ‘Favorite Things.’”

Goods given away during the episode ranged from camcorders to refrigerators to DVD collections, and, the Huffington Post reports, offered an enviable product-placement opportunity for brands Oprah tapped, often leading to a huge spike in sales.

Last year, in response to the turmoil roiling the economic landscape, Oprah switched things up and featured gifts that were homemade or cost “next to nothing” and were sensitive to a recessionary environment.

Oprah made headlines and prompted tears around the world last week when she announced plans to end her long-running daytime show in 2011.

Of her decision to bid the show farewell, she said “Twenty-five years feels right in my bones and feels right in my spirit.”

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The widow of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy told Oprah Winfrey in an interview broadcast Wednesday that even as her husband knew he was dying of brain cancer he had been “in training” to make sure he had enough strength to attend President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

In the most extensive interview since her husband’s death in August, Vicki Kennedy said she wouldn’t try to run for her husband’s former U.S. Senate seat and described how he battled brain cancer – but she would not talk about the last thing he said to her before dying.

“I think I’ll just keep that one to myself,” she told Winfrey on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

During the hour-long interview was taped Friday, Kennedy was sometimes joined on stage by her two grown children as well as Ted Kennedy Jr. She described her husband’s seizure in May 2008, which led to his diagnosis of the brain cancer that ended his life at the age of 77.

“We went from thinking he had lost his life, to thinking that he’d had a stroke, to thinking that he wouldn’t speak to thinking that he was OK, to then finding out that he might have a brain tumor all in the span of about three hours,” she said.

She also told Winfrey about how her husband kept working on his book after his diagnosis and even was calling colleagues in the Senate to talk about strategy to push through legislation as he was traveling to Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. to undergo brain surgery.

“It was an inspiration, really, to watch how Teddy grappled with such a grave diagnosis and always looked forward with hope,” she said.

After watching a clip of her husband’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, Kennedy said her husband, despite being told initially that he had just a few months to live, was determined to survive long enough to see Obama sworn in as president.

“He was in training to be there in January,” she said. “He was exercising every single day to be strong enough to be there,” and even calculated how many steps he would have to take that day.

During the interview, Winfrey held Ted Kennedy’s memoir “True Compass,” which was released shortly after Kennedy’s death, and read from it a number of times. As of Tuesday, the book was 12th on the New York Times Best Sellers list for nonfiction titles.

Kennedy also adamantly told Winfrey that she had no intention of ever running for the Senate seat that her husband held for nearly a half century when the host mentioned about “talk” that she might run.

“No, no, not for me,” she said. “We had Sen. Kennedy in our household.”

The program also included clips from Kennedy’s life. There was news coverage of assassinations of Ted Kennedy’s older brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, along with Kennedy’s own run failed run for president and the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, who drowned after Kennedy drove the car in which she was riding into a pond on Chappaquiddick island.

There were also scenes from Kennedy’s funeral service – including perhaps the most poignant moment during which in his eulogy of his father, Ted Kennedy Jr. told of having his leg amputated when he was 12 and how his father picked him up after he fell on a hill and told him that together they would “climb that hill together, if it takes us all day.”

“He just gave me so much encouragement at a very difficult time in my life,” Kennedy Jr. told Winfrey. “He was just such an optimistic person.”

The younger Kennedy became emotional when he talked about a letter that his father wrote to Pope Benedict XVI after he was diagnosis of terminal brain cancer, a letter in which Kennedy acknowledged some of his failures and, as Winfrey read, how he had “tried to right my path.”

“I though that was the most beautiful letter I’ve ever heard,” he said.

Check out the preview:

The queen of daytime will interview the president of the United States during an ABC holiday special that brings together Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama.

The network has announced that it will “Christmas at the White House: An Oprah Primetime Special” on Sunday, December 13, at 10 p.m. The show will feature an interview with the president, a conversation with the first couple and a tour of the White House. The special also will go behind the scenes as staffers prepare the White House for the holiday season.

The special marks the first time Winfrey has interviewed Obama since he took office.

Winfrey, who had never before endorsed a presidential candidate, was a strong supporter of Obama during his presidential campaign, stumping for him in key states.

She attended Obama’s victory rally in Chicago last November and the president’s inauguration in January but has not been politically involved since the election and recently interviewed former Alaska governor and Obama rival Sarah Palin.

Winfrey also didn’t attend the high-profile first White House state dinner Tuesday night, but her close friend Gayle King did.

Her talk show reigns in daytime, but Winfrey has hosted primetime specials only rarely, most notably her 1993 interview with Michael Jackson at his estate. Winfrey recently announced that she will end her syndicated talk show in 2011 and focus on launching her cable network, OWN.

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey announced her daytime talk show would end after a historic 25-year run. Back in June 2008, BLACK ENTERPRISE Careers/Lifestyle Director Sonia Alleyne sat down for an exclusive one-on-one interview with Winfrey to discuss her extraordinary business empire and how she became the world’s most influential African American entrepreneur.

In June 2008, black enterprise named Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Inc. Its be100s Company of the Year. On the heels of this honor, Winfrey gave an exclusive interview to black enterprise Editorial Director Sonia Alleyne. In the exclusive cover feature, “Oprah Means Business,” she discusses her business beginnings, mistakes, lessons learned, and her defining philosophy. She talks about the winning formula that has taken Harpo Inc. from a five-person production company to a 430-employee multimedia conglomerate that grossed $340 million in 2008 (No. 14 on the be Industrial/Service 100 list). Today, Winfrey is one of a handful of black billionaires across the globe; her net worth estimated at $2.5 billion.

Winfrey, who had planed to unveil the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in 2009, asserts that divine inspiration, not strategic planning, is the key to her company’s success: “I haven’t planned one thing—ever. I have just been led by a strong instinct, and I have made choices based on what was right for me at the time.” And her business lessons were learned on the job. Winfrey got along for years without management controls or development programs to grow talent as she grew her business. “For too long, I operated this business like a family. After a while, you can’t see everybody; you can’t talk to everybody,” she says.

Over the years, Winfrey has also learned another vital lesson—that she is her own best counsel. When veteran TV executive Geraldine Laybourne decided to start the Oxygen cable network for women, she courted Winfrey as an investor. “My lawyer at the time and lots of other people around me said, ‘How are you going to let there be a woman’s network and not be a part of it?’” Winfrey recalls. The network struggled with programming and branding, and Winfrey eventually reduced Harpo’s commitment. “It was an ego decision and not a spirit decision, which is how I make all my decisions,” she says. “The only decisions that get me in trouble are ego decisions.”

Winfrey promises that OWN will be more expansive than anything she’s ever developed. “My intention is for it to live beyond me, for it to be a living network of possibilities for people in their own lives,” she explains. “To be able to say that my life was used in service, to help people come to their highest potential—I would do it even if my name wasn’t attached to it.”

The complete exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey can be found HERE on www.BlackEnterprisise.com.

Step outside Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios and into the near west side neighborhood that’s been home to her television talk show for two decades, and it’s easy to get a sense of what she’s meant to Chicago.

“I used to live across the street from Harpo and when I moved there it was me and cross-dressing crack addicts and Harpo. And now it’s strollers and little white dogs all over,” said Paul O’Connor, whose job has been to sell the city to businesses looking to relocate and those wondering why they should stay.

Along with the upscale condominiums and pricey restaurants that replaced the rundown apartments, abandoned warehouses and vacant storefronts, it’s a sentiment that helps explain just how nervous people in Chicago are about Winfrey’s announcement that next season, the 25th, will be the last for “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

“Chicago’s going to find out that she’s a real engine to hotel rooms, flowers, limo drivers, you name it,” said Joel Nickson, who owns Wishbone restaurant just down the street. “Even when she’s not doing the show, we see people all the time taking cabs out here, taking pictures in front of the place.”

Media analysts will discuss the millions of viewers worldwide who have eagerly watched Winfrey’s show, tuned in others she told them to watch and read books she told them to read. The story in Chicago will be what she’s meant to Chicago.

It’s a story that starts in the neighborhood that people visited just to see her show – then they’d go off to explore the rest of the city. It’s from the neighborhood that Winfrey bragged about Chicago, reminding all those who knew she could take her show just about anywhere that she wanted to be right here.

“Isn’t this the most fabulous city in the world?” Winfrey yelled to more than 20,000 fans who crowded Chicago’s Magnificent Mile in September for the taping of this season’s premiere.

Without Winfrey, some wonder.

“What’s this town going to come to?” asked Ann Coddington, 41, of Richmond, Ind., who was at Harpo Studios to see the show Friday morning. “You think of Chicago, you think of Oprah.”

Winfrey hasn’t said she’s leaving Chicago, but there are indications it’s possible. She is widely expected to start up a new talk show on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, which is set to debut in January 2011. OWN hired “Oprah” co-executive producer Lisa Erspamer this month as its chief creative officer. She is expected to move from Chicago to Los Angeles in January.

Nobody suggests Harpo Studios’ neighborhood will revert to the pre-Winfrey years, when it was all but impossible to catch a cab and there was no place to order a latte much less a nice meal. But the studio stands as a reminder of what has been, and what could be lost.

It was here that celebrities came from all over the world when they had something to say – from Tom Cruise’s declaration of love for Katie Holmes, memorably accompanied by a jump on her couch, to Sarah Palin’s appearance on the show to kick off her book tour.

“It’s our little piece of Hollywood, our big piece of it,” said Bob O’Neill, the president of the Grant Park Conservancy.

Winfrey did more than set up shop in Chicago: She gave other companies reason to do so.

“She is part of the cultural infrastructure which provides a rich intellectual and cultural life to the city and that is absolutely critical for corporate decision making,” said O’Connor, who now works for the Chicago Metropolis 2020 civic group after leaving World Business Chicago, a not-for-profit economic development corporation that worked to attract and keep businesses in Chicago.

Once the businesses are here, Winfrey has even been part of the effort to persuade employees who might be reluctant to pack up and move their families.

“Oprah and the sports and the 5,000 boats on the lake and the museums are all part of the rich mix to help (companies) bring talent here and make that transition.” O’Connor said. “You cannot underestimate that.”

Now, though Winfrey will tape in Chicago for at least another 18 months, the studio will stand as a reminder of all that is plaguing the city, from the staggering economy to the lost bid to host the 2016 Olympic games to losing two major trade shows in recent weeks.

“A lot of bad things are happening,” said O’Neill, who was troubled enough even before Winfrey’s announcement about the spate of bad news that he helped organize a “Chicago in a funk?” symposium. “Her leaving brings a lot of negative publicity.”

Sarah Palin said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that it’s heartbreaking to see the road that Levi Johnston, the father of her grandson, has taken and that the soon-to-be Playgirl model hasn’t seen his baby in awhile.

In an episode that aired Monday, the two women also talked about the controversy surrounding Palin’s possible appearance on the show last year and touched on whether the former Alaska governor planned to run for president in 2012.

Palin and Winfrey embraced as the one-time Republican vice presidential candidate walked onto the talk show stage. Palin’s 413-page book, “Going Rogue,” will be released Tuesday and she begins a book tour Wednesday in Grand Rapids, Mich.

The new memoir doesn’t mention Johnston, who has sparred repeatedly with his former mother-in-law-to-be. Johnston and Palin’s daughter Bristol Palin are parents to son, Tripp.

When Winfrey asked about Johnston, Palin said she didn’t think “a national television show is the place to discuss some of the things he’s doing and saying.”

But Palin went on to say she finds it “a bit heartbreaking to see the road that he is on right now” and that “it’s not a healthy place to be.”

Bristol Palin and her son live at Palin’s home, she said, and have much family support.

“(Johnston’s) quite busy with his media tours and he hasn’t seen the baby for a while,” Palin said. “But we will let that be the discussion between Bristol and Levi as they work out their relationship.”

Palin also said Johnston remains a member of the family and that they can work out any troubles. She said she prays for him and that he has an “open invitation” to Thanksgiving dinner.

“He’s a teenager,” Palin said. “I don’t think he realizes quite yet what it is that he is being handled and orchestrated around.”

Winfrey began the interview by asking Palin if she felt snubbed at not getting an invitation to “The Oprah Winfrey Show” last year. Winfrey said she didn’t have any candidates on her Chicago-based show during the campaign because of her support of President Barack Obama.

Palin said she didn’t feel snubbed and told Winfrey, “No offense to you, but it wasn’t the center of my universe.”

Winfrey also asked Palin if she was thinking about running for president in 2012.

“It’s not on my radar screen right now,” Palin said.

Check out: http://www.oprah.com

Last month, as part of her recent “Women Around the World” series, the talk show queen conducted an interview via Skype with Dr. Lamees Hamdan, a Dubai mother of four who owns Shiffa, a line of high-end skin-care products.

In the online introduction to the segment, Oprah’s team writes of the United Arab Emirates: “Thanks to this country’s rich oil supplies, the government provides its citizens with free water, electricity and health care. The best part? No income tax!”

Although Dubai residents aren’t subject to income tax, there is no support for the other claims. Reaction on the Internet was immediate — and harsh. “Free water, electricity, and health care — eh, not quite!,” the blog Transracial wrote. A commenter on the UAE-based paper 7Days added: “Had a chuckle watching Oprah last night — good to see the world’s most highly paid TV star does her research properly . . . not!”

Many Arab-world viewers also objected to the outfit Hamdan wore on the air — a tunic, but not a sheila, the national headdress. Hamdan referred to her decision to forego the sheila as a “cultural” and not a “religious” one, upsetting some viewers, according to Gulfnews.com.

Another issue was that the interview was conducted via Skype: The Web-based phone system is banned in the UAE, though the rule was waived for Oprah’s segment.

A spokesman for Harpo, Oprah’s production company said, “It was never the intention of the ‘Oprah’ show to misrepresent the people of Dubai. Dr. Hamdan appeared live on our program to speak about her personal life experience as a citizen of Dubai. We apologize if any of our viewers were offended.”

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