Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 23, 2002
Chung moving to CNN
CNN has hired Connie Chung from ABC to anchor a nightly news show, ratcheting up the stakes in a heated competition among cable news networks.
The hiring is expected to be announced at a news conference today. Chung, who had a year left on her ABC deal, declined to comment to the Associated Press on Tuesday.
Her hiring is the splashiest move yet by CNN in its competition with Fox News Channel, which has made inroads against CNN, mostly with its prime-time talk shows.
Comedian Paula Poundstone, in her first interview since a child abuse case was filed against her last year, said Tuesday she has been "colossally stupid" but has never hit or sexually abused anyone.
"I set up a very volatile situation just between the characters involved and the fact that I was drinking. . . . In retrospect, I realize that things were unsafe," she said on Dateline NBC.
"What happened is so colossally stupid that it's probably more embarrassing than anything else."
Poundstone, who had two adopted and three foster children, pleaded no contest in September to child abuse and inflicting injury upon a child. Prosecutors, who have declined to give details, dropped a charge of committing a lewd act on a child.
Poundstone, 41, has said she had a drinking problem. Part of her sentence was a 180-day rehab stay. Her lawyer has said the charges stemmed from driving four of the children to get ice cream while she was drunk.
The fashion world turned out to cheer Yves Saint Laurent on Tuesday as the 20th century's towering fashion figure displayed a dazzling chronology of his best looks in his final haute couture show.
Thousands crowded the plaza outside Paris' Georges Pompidou Center to see the 2,000 invited guests. They stayed to watch the show on two giant video screens.
Saint Laurent presented four decades of clothes: some originals, many updated classics and a few new designs. Woven throughout was his defining garment: the "smoking," or tuxedo.
Saint Laurent, 65, two weeks ago announced he was ending his glorious and turbulent career, partly in disgust over what he saw as an industry ruled by commerce rather than art.
Alan Ruck, who plays mayoral chief of staff Stuart Bondek on Spin City but perhaps best known as neurotic best buddy Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, has been hospitalized since Dec. 23 with a strep infection that caused kidney failure, producers told Eonline.com Tuesday. He "is expected to make a full recovery after a lengthy rehabilitation," ABC said. Ruck, 45, unlikely will be back on the show this season.
Carrie Hamilton, daughter of Carol Burnett and the late producer Joe Hamilton, has died of cancer. She was 38. Hamilton, who died Sunday at a Los Angeles hospital, is best-known for appearing in the TV series Fame. She spoke publicly in the '80s about her struggles with addiction and her decision to go drug-free.