Health

Tiger Woods clearly felt a little claustrophobic to start the first round of the PGA Championship on Thursday ... 'cause the golf legend asked a cameraman to give him some space THREE times on the tourney's opening hole.

Woods had just teed off at the Southern Hills Championship Course in Tulsa, Oklahoma ... when a man holding a giant camera approached him to record him as he walked down the fairway to his ball.

Hot microphones picked up Woods almost immediately asking the guy to scram.

"Would you mind giving me some breathing space?" Tiger asked. "Please?"

The camera guy clearly didn't move too much -- which caused Woods to ask again more sternly, "Would you mind giving me some breathing space, please?"

Finally, after a few more feet side-by-side, Woods asked, "Could you back off a little bit and give me some breathing space?"

Apparently, the camera guy finally got the memo -- and moved far enough away from the 46-year-old.

The interaction was awkward ... but it apparently didn't bother Woods too much, 'cause the second shot he hit was a dart -- and he later went on to birdie the hole.

Major League Baseball reporter Kelsey Wingert was drilled in the face by a line drive earlier this week ... and in a new photo she posted on Wednesday, you can see the ball did some serious damage to her forehead.

The incident happened during the ninth inning of the Colorado Rockies vs. San Francisco Giants game in Denver on Monday ... when Austin Slater belted a foul ball into the Rockies' dugout area.

The 95 MPH shot made a beeline right at Wingert, a Rockies reporter, and, unfortunately, she wasn't able to move out of the way.

The aftermath of the strike was caught on video -- and you can hear in the clip, one TV broadcaster was very concerned and asked, "Kelsey, you okay?"

Wingert was able to walk out of the dugout and did give a thumbs up ... but in an update on Wednesday, she revealed the strike caused a gnarly injury.

The 29-year-old said she had to spend five hours at a local hospital and needed several stitches to close the wound. She added that she required a CT scan as well.

Thankfully, Wingert said the testing went well and she's now doing OK -- and thanked the Rockies and her colleagues for all of the support in the wake of the incident.

"I've never experienced support like this," she said. "Thank you for the prayers."

Korn co-founder James Shaffer got real with us Wednesday about addiction, the difficulty of staying sober on the road, and the tragedy that befell Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.

We got James at LAX and asked about temptations when a band is touring, and he says it's a constant problem. James, who has been sober for a dozen years, says he still feels the pull of addiction when others around him want to party with drugs and booze.

He says rock stars always have folks offering stuff, and that makes sobriety difficult.

Our photog asks about Taylor Hawkins' recent death, and James says he's still heartbroken over it, and feels enormous sympathy for Taylor's family and Dave Grohl.

James has an interesting take on how his fellow musicians can manage the pull of addiction as well as mental health struggles ... by creating a community within his profession. James says musicians are sensitive people, so getting support from like-minded people is essential for the well-being of his community.

Monkeypox is surging around the globe and now the rare virus has found its way inside our borders.

The first case of monkeypox in the United States this year was detected Tuesday when a Massachusetts man tested positive for the virus ... according to health officials.

The man recently traveled to Canada, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and the CDC confirmed his positive test result.

The MDPH says the man is hospitalized in good condition and poses no risk to the public, though they say they are working with the CDC on contact tracing.

Monkeypox is extremely rare in the United States, this is only the third confirmed case since 2003, but it is on the rise worldwide ... with 9 recent cases identified in the United Kingdom since May, plus another 5 in Portugal.

The disease is caused by the monkeypox virus, and it's part of the same family of viruses as chickenpox and smallpox. It's very rare outside Africa, and the CDC says the virus does not occur naturally in the States.

Monkeypox transmits from animals to humans when an infected animal, usually a primate or rodent, bites or scratches a human ... or from preparing wild game or hunting wild animals.

When a person becomes infected, the disease spreads in various ways, including bodily fluids and respiratory droplets in the air during prolonged face-to-face contact.

Monkeypox symptoms include fever, headache, chills, rash, muscle aches and lesions similar to those caused by smallpox. It can be fatal, especially with young children.

Martin Shkreli is a free man (sorta) -- the guy's been released from prison ... and relatively early considering the length of his original sentence.

The one-time pharmaceutical exec and hedge fund manager -- who was convicted on securities fraud charges back in 2017 -- was sprung from FCI Allenwood Low in Pennsylvania Wednesday ... and will now be transferred to community confinement through the Bureau of Prisons' NY Residential Reentry Management Office.

He was initially sentenced to 7 years in prison after being found guilty on 3 of 8 federal charges pertaining to his reign at the pharmaceutical company Retrophin.

Shkreli was quick to celebrate -- posting a photo of himself on Facebook with the caption, "Getting out of real prison is easier than getting out of Twitter prison."

He seems to be rocking prison wear -- all-gray sweatsuit -- and may have even gotten a ride by some rando. A dude named Edmund Sullivan posted pics with MS, writing ... "Picked up this guy hitchhiking. Says he's famous." Might be a joke, who knows?

Shkreli's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, says his client will now be living in a halfway house. Brafman adds his client has completed various programs while behind bars to facilitate his early release from prison. He says Shkreli will make no further comment at this time.

A TikTok star's pleasure turned into a real pain in the butt, literally -- she says she got a sex toy stuck up there and had to get it surgically removed.

The woman, who goes by the handle @sophzaloafs and lives in the U.K., shared her horror story ... and even posted the X-ray images of a vibrator inside her body.

The TikToker says things got out of hand when she was using the 3-inch toy, and when she couldn't get it out, she sought medical help.

She says she couldn't go to the hospital the night it happened, so she tried sleeping with the vibrator inside ... but the toy continued to buzz throughout the night. As you'd imagine, that made for some serious tossing and turning.

When she finally went to the hospital the next morning, she says doctors struggled to get it out, and the only option was a surgical procedure.

Selena Gomez has teamed up with President Biden and his administration to put a spotlight on mental health ... with the help of youth who are also speaking up on the issue.

The singer was on hand Wednesday at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to deliver remarks and help lead a conversation with the newly formed Mental Health Youth Action Forum ... which was put together courtesy of MTV and Rare Beauty's Rare Impact Fund.

Selena was intro'd by Dr. Jill Biden, and then outlined why she was doing this ... and why it was important to empower people to discuss mental health more openly.

The whole idea of this is to end the stigma surrounding mental health, while also propping up young leaders who work in the field ... via advocacy, entrepreneurship or both. It appears some of those folks were actually sitting around as SG spoke -- it was a packed house.

Some of the things Selena and co. are hoping to achieve with this new forum include changing labor laws to be more sensitive to mental health needs -- including getting extra PTO specifically for mental health, which would be treated almost like sick days.

Here's a whopper of a tale. Everyone knows what goes into a Big Mac from that catchy jingle from the '70s ... but only one man can claim a Big Mac has gone into his stomach every single day for the past 50 years!!!

Don Gorske -- a 68-year-old man from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin -- has been lovin' the double-decker burger creation from Mickey D's ever since May 17, 1972, when he sank his teeth into his first Big Mac ... and he's never looked back.

The Big Mac was first released just 5 years earlier in 1967, but nobody on Earth has consumed as many of them over the last 50 years as Gorske. It's true ... Gorske gobbled down his 30,000th Big Mac way back in 2018 and got himself a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. He hit 32,672 in 2021 ... and he just keeps going, eating at least one Big Mac (and usually two) almost every day of his life.

And, in case you're wondering about his health, Gorske says the steady burger diet hasn't slowed him down a bit.

Gorske says "I got a comic of somebody saying I was gonna die of a heart attack within 15,000 big macs. Heck, now I'm over 30,000. I'm still alive. It's not really the food you eat. It's your lifestyle. If you're lazy, I probably would have gained a lot of weight. But, because I'm so active, I burn off my only calories.

The family of a 12-year-old boy is suing Apple ... claiming he has permanent hearing loss, after wearing AirPods during an Amber Alert.

The family filed suit Monday ... accusing the company of negligence and fraud, claiming the boy's life has been 'severely altered'.

According to legal docs obtained by TMZ ... Carlos Gordoa and Ariani Reyes claim Apple AirPods ruptured their son's eardrum back in May of 2020, while he was wearing the product and watching Netflix on his phone.

The family says, when an Amber Alert went off, it was so loud it caused tinnitus -- ringing in the ears. They claim he now suffers from dizziness and must wear a hearing aid.

The fam claims the Apple product is defective because it plays alerts at a dangerous level ... no matter what volume the user has chosen.

To take it a step further ... Gordoa and Reyes say Apple had known that the AirPods played extremely loud alerts that did not match the selected volume ... from tons of comments online. They say the complaints date back to 2019.

Lerone Murphy -- an unbeaten UFC fighter -- says he nearly died on Tuesday ... after he suffered a "nasty head wound" in a terrifying bicycle accident.

Murphy says he was pedaling on the road when an oncoming car didn't see him and suddenly made a right turn -- causing a bad accident at a relatively high rate of speed.

Murphy says he injured his head in the collision ... and was bleeding profusely. In fact, the 30-year-old says the wound was so bad -- he "nearly" bled out on the scene.

Thankfully, medical personnel eventually arrived and rushed Murphy to the hospital, where he ultimately survived and took a selfie from his bed.

"Im here still breathing for a greater purpose clearly 🙏🏾💫" Murphy said Wednesday in a social media post.

Of course, this is not the first time Murphy has defied death. The featherweight was shot in the face and neck after leaving a barbershop in the UK in 2013.

Murphy heroically battled back from those injuries -- and earned the nickname "The Miracle" in fighting circles.

Halsey's performance Tuesday night in West Palm Beach came to a grinding halt mid-concert, and it seems something happened in the crowd.

Halsey was center stage at the iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre, 30 minutes into her set, singing "You Should Be Sad."

Suddenly, she stopped the show, apparently telling her crew to stop the music.  You hear the crowd, clearly confused, asking "What's wrong?"

Halsey then kneels down on stage and says something, but there's a critical word we can't decipher -- she says, "I didn't think I was going to have to do that until a couple days into the tour, dammit."

Then she seems to say something happened in the crowd that crossed the line ... She tells them, "While I have you I just want to make a statement ... make a reminder, you know.  I know we've been locked inside for a long time and forgot how to act like f***ing people. But, everybody is here because they love the same thing you do so treat them with compassion, community."

We don't know if there was a crowd swarm, although someone in the crowd tells us there was no obvious evidence of that.

Halsey went on, "All of us are here because we love the same thing, hate the same thing. Because your girlfriend dragged you here, that's fine too. You love your girlfriend. I love your girlfriend. Let's talk about that later in the set. Let's try that one more time."

She then resumed the show, singing "You Should Be Sad," from the beginning.

Tragic news in the boxing world ... undefeated fighter Musa Yamak died during a match on Saturday -- after he suffered a heart attack in the ring and collapsed to the mat.

The awful scene went down in Germany ... when Yamak was in the middle of his fight with Hamza Wandera.

Yamak had reportedly taken at least one big blow from Wandera in the second round ... and as he was coming out of his corner for the third round of the scrap -- he stumbled, and eventually crumpled to the ground.

Trainers and other medical personnel on the scene rushed to his aid -- but, sadly, Yamak later passed away.

He was just 38 years old.

Turkish official Hasan Turan mourned the death in a social media post hours after the tragedy ... saying, "I wish God's mercy on the deceased ... my condolences to his sad family and fans."

Yamak -- who turned pro in 2017 -- had built an impressive resume in his career, starting 8-0. In 2021, he gained notoriety after winning the WBFed International title.

Bam Margera just reached a major milestone ... completing a 12-month treatment program for drug and alcohol abuse.

The 'Jackass' star tells TMZ ... he just finished the year-long program in Florida, and for the next couple months he's going to continue attending outpatient treatment classes.

Bam says he's living near his rehab center in Boca Raton, and his wife Nikki and son Phoenix recently moved in with him because he's now able to live in an apartment outside of the treatment center while he attends classes.

It's a significant step for Bam, who didn't let a slip-up derail him from completing his program. As we first reported, Bam popped up at a Florida casino back in September and got a ride back to his rehab facility in the back of a cop car.

Bam's also working out again as part of his rehab ... and last month his "Viva La Bam" costar Brandon Novak told us it's the closest Bam's been to the person he was when they were growing up together on the skateboard scene.

Sounds like things are on the up and up for Bam after he got booted from the latest 'Jackass' movie due to a failed drug test. Bam sued and recently reached a settlement, and now he says he's happy with the outcome and feels vindicated.

Lil Keed complained to his friends and family he was suffering from serious stomach pain in the days leading up to his death ... with things getting so bad he had to go to the hospital.

Multiple sources close to Keed tell us ... the YSL label rapper had his battles over the years with alcohol and drugs, but had been clean and sober of late. We're told last week he began experiencing severe stomach pain and went to an L.A. hospital to get checked out.

From there, our sources say things got worse, and Keed's organs -- his liver and kidneys -- started failing ... leading to his death.

As we reported, news of his death shocked the hip hop world over the weekend when his brother, Lil Gotit, posted, "Can't believe I seened u die today bro I did all my cries I know what u want me to do and that's go hard for Mama Daddy Our Brothers Naychur and Whiteboy."

While Keed is a YSL rapper, he was not named in the recent indictment with Young Thug and Gunna.

The Los Angeles County Coroner's office is expected to do an autopsy this week.

Awful news ... WWE legend "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan says his cancer has returned -- and both he and his family are "terrified."

The wrestler did add, though, his doctors are "very optimistic that they caught it early."

Duggan had battled the disease for most of 2021 ... needing multiple procedures -- including one in which doctors removed his prostate -- to try to eradicate it. In December, he said medical experts had declared him officially cancer-free.

But, the 68-year-old said in a video message on Sunday that it had returned ... adding, "It's a very terrifying time for me and my family."

Duggan said he's now gearing up to undergo more treatments to try to get rid of the disease ... explaining in his video message he's set to have radiation therapy for eight weeks, five days a week.

"Hacksaw" said doctors are optimistic about the potential results of the treatments, and added they're encouraging him to "go ahead and live life."

"Which we're going to go ahead and do," he said.

"I'm afraid I'm going to make most shows, but some shows, I'm going to have to postpone or cancel," Duggan added. "And, I'm sorry about that, but that's the way it's got to be."

In addition to his 2021 battle with cancer, Duggan also battled the disease in his 40s -- and has dealt with heart problems as well. He did say that fans' support has helped him through it all -- and he's hoping for a similar outcome this year.

"You folks have helped me through an awful, awful lot over the years, many times before," he said. "And, sharing this with you is going to help me get through this. So, thank you."

French Montana just got screwed by his pooch -- because a jury just awarded his pool guy a bunch of money over French's dog biting the man.

A California jury found French's German Shepherd, Zane, was the culprit in the gnarly attack against Juan Lomeli -- the dude who sued FM way back in 2018.

You'll recall ... Lomeli alleged at the time French's pet lost it on him while he was doing his job on the grounds, lunging at him and sinking its teeth into his arm, causing a nasty and painful injury.

Lomeli -- who was represented by attorney Brad Wallace -- testified the injuries were severe enough for him to miss a substantial amount of time working ... which he claimed cost him serious dough he would've otherwise made.

Looks like this case has been working its way through the legal system ... and now, a jury has weighed in -- awarding Lomeli a whopping $129,500 in damages.

Here's how the judgment breaks down -- $39,500 in past economic loss, $60k in non-economic loss (pain/suffering etc.), and another $30k for future non-economic loss.