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Sexy Parker ads for soap prove to be too hot for Israel

JERUSALEM - It looks like Sarah Jessica Parker is too sexy for some Israelis' tastes.

A poster and billboard campaign showing the Sex and the City actor in a skimpy, sequined dress was quickly replaced with new ads of her in a dress that covered her arms, back and thigh, reportedly after ultra-Orthodox consumers objected to her outfit.

The sexy ads promoting Lux soaps had begun appearing on billboards in recent days. But after an angry phone call from a prominent rabbi, the consumer goods giant Unilever quickly gave Parker a more modest wardrobe, the Haaretz daily reported.

Tonight's episode of ABC's 20/20 (10, WFTS-Ch. 28) says the description of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard as an antigay hate crime is entirely wrong.

The two men convicted in the crime, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, speak on camera, and McKinney, who beat Shepard senseless and tied him to a fence outside Laramie, Wyo., now says that he and his defense team cooked up a gay-panic defense - the one that said he responded violently when hit on by a man - though it wasn't true.

"I have gay friends," McKinney says, and the show says Shepard may have been one of them.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - Marion Hamner Hawkes, a tomboy-turned-nurse who inspired the character of Mary Ellen on television's The Waltons, has died. She was 74.

Mrs. Hawkes, who died Monday (Nov. 22, 2004) after a long illness, was the sister of show creator Earl Hamner Jr., who based the characters on his family and experiences growing up in Virginia during the Depression.

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