The Internet search firm’s board ousted Thompson after an activist investor discovered that Thompson had claimed bachelor’s degrees in accounting and computer science on his resume, but had actually only earned an accounting degree from Stonehill College, outside Boston.

Daniel Loeb, whose Third Point hedge fund owns 5.8 percent of Yahoo!, sent a letter to the board on May 3 detailing the inaccuracies and asking why they appeared on Yahoo! SEC filings, the Yahoo! website, and on PayPal’s website when Thompson worked there.

The board initially circled the wagons around Thompson, accepting his assertion that the resume gaffe was made by an executive search firm. Later, the headhunting firm claimed to have proof to the contrary.

The board fired Thompson without severance and demanded that he give up $16 million in unvested stock options. He will keep the $5.5 million that Yahoo! paid him to leave PayPal along with the earned portion of his $2 million salary for 2012.

Loeb targeted Thompson after a failed bid to gain a seat on Yahoo!’s board of directors. Loeb has since struck a deal to nominate three people to the Yahoo! board.

Ross Levinsohn, who was Yahoo!’s executive vice president and head of global media, will take over as interim CEO.

“The board believes in the strength of the company’s business and assets, and in the opportunities before us, and I am honored to work closely with my fellow directors and Ross to continue to drive Yahoo forward,” said chairman of the board Fred Amoroso.

“There’s been a lot of back and forth over the past few weeks as they negotiated the small details, but she’s on,” an anonymous source told E! News. “It’s all completed and Britney is beyond excited.”

Spears will get paid $15 million to sit on the judges’ panel, which is also slated to include show creator Simon Cowell and recording industry executive Antonio “L.A.” Reid.

Spears isn’t the only big-name celebrity who has recently decided to give talent shows a try. Radio shock jock Howard Stern makes his debut Monday as a judge on “America’s Got Talent,”

“I think Britney is going to stand there and eat a lollipop and wear a sexy outfit and I don’t expect great opinions out of her. I’ll tune in and see what kind of a train wreck she is,” Stern said at a news conference in New York City.

Spears,30, skyrocketed to fame in 1999 with the release of her “Baby One More Time” album, but her career has been hindered by stints in rehab and erratic behavior that eventually led to her substantial fortune being placed in her father’s control.

Spears’ addition to the show comes as Cowell tries to boost the show’s ratings for its second season. Cowell had predicted that the show would score 20 million viewers a week in its debut season, but it ended up delivering only 12 million.

And in the end, only the competition’s judge, deputy Dominic Martucci at Ohio’s Summit County Jail, was sent home for a poor performance, according to the sheriff’s office.

“The community needs to be assured that all inmates that come through the doors of the Summit County jail will be treated humanely and with respect,” sheriff’s office inspector Bill Holland told the Associated Press . “All allegations to the contrary will be investigated. We take these matters very seriously, and any member of our agency that does not share this philosophy will be disciplined accordingly.”

Martucci had inmates perform the worm, the robot, and the bump-and-grind to earn use of the microwave after he unplugged the oven in his unit when some inmates ignored his orders to return to their cells.

Another inmate danced so he could make a phone call to his relatives after a death in the family, according to an internal report cited by The Associated Press.

After an inmate complained about the involuntary dancing, Martucci was cited for mistreating inmates, acting inappropriately and having a cellphone in the jail.

The cell phone was used to play music to accompany the prisoners as they danced.

“Lamar and I have just chosen to take a break this summer,” Kardashian told Entertainment Tonight. “I feel like we’ve been on a whirlwind and doing back-to-back shows. We just want to take a little time off for Lamar to be with family time, kids, basketball, Olympics, you never know. We have a lot on our plate right now.”

Odom said that he’ll use the time off to train and try to make the U.S. Olympic basketball team, which will play in London this summer, then return to the NBA in the fall.

He was traded from the L.A. Lakers to the Mavericks in December and moved to the team’s inactive list after a 50-game stretch that produced the worst numbers of his career.

“We just want to be happy,” Odom said. “We’ll take our time and we’ll get back to [the show] when it’s time.”

The couple will continue to participate in filming episodes of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” and gossip site TMZ.com has reported that Khloe is in discussions with E! about starting a new reality show without Odom.

“She just started treating me horribly, viciously, inhumanly after the surgery,” 47-year-old Debbie Stevens told ABCNews.com. “It was almost like she hired me just to get my kidney.”

Stevens had donated her kidney to a patient in Missouri in August of last year in a multi-patient organ trade that got Jackie Brucia, 61, Stevens’ boss at Atlantic Automotive Group on Long Island, a kidney from a donor in San Francisco.

When Stevens complained about the post-op treatment she received from Brucia, Atlantic Automotive Group transferred her to a dealership 50 miles from her home.

“I decided to become a kidney donor to my boss, and she took my heart,’’ Stevens told the New York Post.

Stevens has filed a complaint against Brucia with the New York State Civil Rights Commission, alleging that Brucia hired her for her kidney, then fired her once she had it.

Stevens had worked for the car dealership in 2009 and 2010 but quit to move to Florida. On a visit back to New York she stopped in at the dealership, Brucia told her about her kidney problem, and Stevens told her that she would be happy to be a donor, Stevens says.

Brucia hired Stevens back within a few weeks of Stevens moving back to New York, Stevens says. In January 2011, Brucia asked her for her kidney.

Stevens is also suing Atlantic Automotive Group.

“Our ultimate goal is to bring this before federal court,” Lenard Leeds, Stevens’ attorney told ABCNews.com. “We’re alleging they discriminated against her for her disability and they retaliated against her when she complained about the harassment.”

“Some students … started a rumor that one of the teachers at the school was involved in pornography,” Oxnard School District Superintendent Jeff Chancer told ABC News.

School administrators initially were unable to verify the rumor because of the pornography filters on the school’s computers. Administrators then circulated a memo to the school’s staff about the rumor.

That’s when Halas’ colleagues used their smartphones to find evidence of her X-rated past. There is no word on whether the school district forbids teachers from perusing pornography on their phones while on school property.

Halas was put on administrative leave on March 2 and was fired last week by the school board. She has hired a lawyer who says she wants her job back.

“We disagree with the decision by the board to dismiss or seek the dismissal of Miss Halas. It is our intention at this time to vigorously contest the charges,” Richard Schwab, Halas’ attorney, told the Ventura County Star.

“The type of conduct she engaged in was lawful conduct in a business which, while others may disagree with its content, is very vibrant in both Los Angeles as well as the state of California,” Schwab said.

“Maybe it’s not a crime as far as the penal code is concerned, but we feel it’s a crime as far as moral turpitude is concerned,” Chancer said.

Halas, 32, was active in the adult film industry from 2005 to 2007, according to the Internet Adult Film Database. Her credits include “18 and Nasty 46,” “Un-natural Sex 16,” and various other titles that can’t be mentioned in polite conversation.

“We don’t know if our face has been on it, just body parts, we don’t know anything about it, all we know is he had us on film,” Crystal Dean, who seeks to sue Sears, told NBC Los Angeles.

Police arrested the peeping Tom, 27-year-old Alejandro Gamiz, on April 12 on charges of suspicion of burglary for placing the hidden cameras in the store. He posted bail and was released.

Dean claims that Sears knew about the cameras as long as four months ago, but did nothing to stop it until recently.

Gamiz admitted to the Los Angeles Police Department that the cameras had been installed for at least three years, Detective Karen Crawford told KNX news radio.

“I felt really hurt that nothing has, nothing was told to us more,” Dean said.

“If we were to learn that others were involved in this incident or knew of it and failed to report it, we will take disciplinary action,” Sears’ corporate headquarters told NBC in a statement.

Gamiz is set to appear in court to answer the charges on May 11.

“Certainly we put taxpayer dollars into health care for our employees, and anything that might benefit the health to make our employees more protective and healthy, we’re going to take a look at,” Mayor Betsy Price told WFAA-TV in Fort Worth.

But some city workers think that the city taking an interest into workers’ legal vices amounts o an invasion of privacy

“I think it’s an infringement on the public’s rights to live their life the way they choose to,” said Vince Chasteen, president of the Fort Worth’s employee association.

Though it would be the first city, Fort Worth would not be the first employer to ban smoking among its workers. In 2006, The Scotts Co., maker of lawn and garden products like Miracle Grow, fired employee Scott Rodrigues for smoking. Rodrigues sued the company for invasion of privacy and lost.

The Fort Worth ban was suggested by a city employee as a way to save money on healthcare expenses, though the jury is out on whether the city would hire someone who has a smoking spouse who would be covered under the city’s health insurance.

Twenty-nine states have written laws that protect smokers from discrimination, but Texas is not among them.

A final decision about hiring smokers won’t come until at least May 8, when the city’s health department will make a presentation to city council.

“Guys, push it to full throttle,” Clayton Obson yelled toward the cockpit after being locked out by his copilot and another JetBlue pilot who happened to be travelling on the flight. He was quickly subdued for the rest of the flight by flight attendants and passengers with seat-belt extenders and zip ties.

Now, Obson has been indicted by a grand jury in Texas for interference with his own flight crew, a charge that could land him behind bars for up to 20 years.

Aviation authorities say that the investigation of Obson will likely examine whether Obson had changed any medications, according to the Christian Science Monitor. They say that could have caused Obson to have hallucinations, triggering perhaps the most dangerous on-the-job meltdown in history. Obson had a perfect flight record leading up to the incident.

“It is our belief, as Clayton’s family, that while he was clearly distressed, he was not intentionally violent toward anyone,” Clayton’s wife, Connye, said in an April 1 apology to the flight’s crew and passengers. “We know you were placed in an awful situation and we appreciate your ability to respond professionally.”

The court has ordered Obson to go through a psychiatric evaluation to establish if he was legally sane when he disrupted the flight.

“He made the decision, a conscious decision, to mislead the public on Tuesday, and in doing so negatively affected the reputation of the University of Arkansas and our football program,” athletic director Jeff Long said at a Tuesday press conference. “In short, Coach Petrino engaged in a pattern of misleading and manipulative behavior designed to deceive me and members of the athletic staff, both before and after the motorcycle accident.”

Petrino, who coached the Razorbacks to a Cotton Bowl win against Kansas State this year after an 11-2 season, suffered broken ribs and a cracked vertebrae in the wreck.

He hurt himself even more when he lied to Long about being alone when he crashed. Police reports later revealed that 25-year-old Jessica Dorrrell, who Petrino had recently hired as a student-athlete development coordinator, was riding on the motorcycle with him but unhurt.

A subsequent athletics department investigation revealed that Petrino, 51 and married with four children, had been having an affair with Dorrell for “a significant amount of time,” had given her $20,000, and had circumvented the usual hiring process to give her a job.

“I chose to engage in an improper relationship. I also made several poor decisions following the end of that relationship and in the aftermath of the accident. I accept full responsibility for what has happened,” Petrino said in a statement issued after he had been fired.

“He used the athletic department funds to hire, for his staff, a person with whom he had had an inappropriate relationship. He engaged in reckless and unacceptable behavior that put his relationship in the national spotlight,” Long said.