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In the news
By Times staff writer Actor accepts plea agreementActor Natasha Lyonne pleaded guilty Monday to a drunken driving charge from a Miami Beach crash last year. Under the plea agreement, the 23-year-old American Pie co-star will have her driver's license suspended for six months. She also was fined $255, sentenced to six months probation and 50 hours of community service, and her car will be impounded for 10 days. Lyonne also must take part in a victim impact panel conducted by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Attorneys expected to complete the deal last week, but Miami-Dade Judge Beth Bloom refused the plea because she wanted an original copy of Lyonne's fingerprints. Lyonne's attorney, David Rothman, provided the prints and accepted the deal for his client Monday. She was not in court. Miami Beach police arrested Lyonne last August after she crashed her rental car while rounding a curve about 2 a.m. She and a passenger, actor Adam Goldberg, weren't injured. Lyonne, a Manhattan resident who used to live in Miami, was charged with careless driving, leaving the scene of an accident and driving under the influence. Jennings mum on contract speculationHere's one story you won't be hearing from Peter Jennings: whether or not he has agreed to a new contract to stay as top anchor at ABC News. The 63-year-old World News Tonight anchor refused to comment on his contractual status Monday, except to say one newspaper report that he has accepted a new long-term deal was "not entirely accurate." Staying would make sense: Jennings will narrate a six-part series, In Search of America, on ABC prime-time Sept. 3-7 and anchor the network's Sept. 11 anniversary coverage -- both after the expiration of his old contract. "If there were going to be some significant change in personnel at ABC News, we would announce that," ABC News president David Westin said. Jennings said that he wanted to maintain as much privacy as he could in a public job and that contract talk is a distraction. "I'm not being coy," he said. "It's one of those things I decided a long time ago I just didn't want to talk about and I never have." 'Ol' Man River' vocalist dies after fallWilliam Warfield, an acclaimed bass-baritone known best for his rendition of Ol' Man River in the musical Show Boat, has died. Warfield, 82, died Sunday at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago where he had been recovering from a fall, his brother Thaddeus Warfield said. An autopsy was pending. Warfield had most recently served as a professor of music at Northwestern University. In 1952, he performed opposite opera star Leontyne Price in Porgy and Bess during a European tour. They soon were married and divorced in 1972. In 1984 Warfield received a Grammy for his narration of Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait. FSU in talks to build symphony hallRepresentatives of the Florida West Coast Symphony and Florida State University president Sandy D'Alemberte are meeting in Tallahassee today for a preliminary discussion about building a hall together in Sarasota, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports. The orchestra is looking at several sites, including one near the Ringling Museum of Art, which is run by FSU. The new 1,200-seat auditorium there would be owned by the university and leased to the symphony. The orchestra, which has raised $7-million toward the project, also is considering a site near Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, where it currently plays, and Lakewood Ranch, a development east of I-75 in Manatee County that has offered the orchestra a parcel of land.
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From the wire |
