In the news

'48 Hours' to feature local transgender woman

OLDSMAR - A local transgender story is going national.

A crew from the CBS program 48 Hours will come to Oldsmar today to begin assembling a story on Jennifer Edwards.

Edwards, formerly Edward Kozlowski, was in the news in June when she made her first public appearance as a woman as the head of the Oldsmar code enforcement board.

For the past year, she has lived as a woman, one of the requirements for undergoing sexual reassignment surgery.

The CBS crew will film the board meeting today and return next week to capture more footage of Edwards. It is planning to follow Edwards to Miami on Jan. 15 for her surgery.

Producers say the segment will air sometime after the surgery.

Gwyneth Paltrow and boyfriend Chris Martin are expecting their first child next summer, her publicist said Wednesday.

The couple were "pleased" to confirm the pregnancy, publicist Stephen Huvane said in a statement. He declined to say whether there were wedding plans.

The 31-year-old actor has been dating Martin, frontman for the band Coldplay, for the past year.

The video game of the year was Madden NFL 2004, but the bikini-clad beauties in Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball had the best digital animation.

So says Spike TV, which plans to broadcast its first-ever Video Game Awards ceremony tonight.

Categories included most addictive game - which went to the supernatural slash-and-attack Soul Calibur II - and best performance by a human, which honored Goodfellas actor Ray Liotta for his voice work as thug Tommy Vercetti in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

There was even a category for games that haven't been released yet. Halo 2, a sequel to the acclaimed sci-fi shooter, won that prize - but it won't be in stores until April 2004.

David Spade hosted the ceremony at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

The debut of The Simple Life, Fox's reality show about Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie roughing it on a farm, drew a solid 13-million viewers Tuesday, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The Fox series matched a special Tuesday showing of CBS's JAG, which also drew 13-million viewers, and was bettered only by NBC's Law & Order: SVU, which had an audience of 13.6-million.

NBC's The Tracy Morgan Show, which kicked off with back-to-back episodes, drew 9.9-million viewers in its first half-hour and 8.7-million in the second - when it competed against Simple Life.

ABC's drama Line of Fire drew 9.4-million viewers at 10 p.m.