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ABC 'World News' anchor Vargas pregnant

By wire services
Published February 11, 2006

ABC's World News Tonight, scrambling to fill the gap left by injured co- anchor Bob Woodruff, is facing further instability: Elizabeth Vargas, Woodruff's co-anchor, is pregnant.

Vargas and her husband, singer-songwriter Marc Cohn, are expecting their second child in late summer, they announced Friday. The couple have a son, Zachary, 3, and Cohn has two children - Max, 14, and Emily, 11 - from a previous marriage.

Vargas, who with John Stossel also co-anchors the ABC newsmagazine 20/20, will continue to anchor both programs through late summer.

Woodruff is being treated at Bethesda Medical Center in Maryland for injuries he sustained in an Iraqi roadside bombing Jan. 29. Vargas, 43, and Woodruff, 44, debuted as World News Tonight co-anchors Jan. 3.

Good Morning America co-hosts Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer have filled in for Woodruff and will continue to do so "for the next few weeks," ABC News spokeswoman Cathie Levine said.

Franklin Cover, who became a familiar face as George and Louise Jefferson's white neighbor in the long-running TV sitcom The Jeffersons, has died, his publicist said Thursday. He was 77.

Mr. Cover died of pneumonia Sunday (Feb. 5, 2006) at the Lillian Booth Actor's Fund of America home in Englewood, N.J., said publicist Dale Olson. He had been living at the home since December 2005 while recuperating from a heart condition.

In his nearly six decades in show business, Mr. Cover made numerous appearances on television shows, including The Jackie Gleason Show, All in the Family, Who's the Boss? Will & Grace, Living Single, Mad About You and ER.

He began his career on the stage, appearing in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Henry IV, and later in numerous Broadway productions, including Any Wednesday, Wild Honey and Born Yesterday.

But Mr. Cover was best known for his role as Tom Willis, who was in an interracial marriage with a black woman, in The Jeffersons.

He and his wife lived in the same "deluxe apartment building" that Sherman Hemsley moved his family to after making money in the dry-cleaning business. There, Mr. Cover often played a comic foil to Hemsley's blustering, opinionated black businessman. The show ran from 1975 to 1985.

Cover also appeared in several films, including The Great Gatsby, The Stepford Wives and Wall Street.

He is survived by his widow, Mary, a son and a daughter.

Tom Sizemore, who has admitted in court to using methamphetamine, says he's struggling to come out from the haze of drug addiction.

The 44-year-old actor was sentenced Thursday in New York to three years' probation after tearfully confessing that he used meth last month. He could have faced 16 months in prison after violating his probation stemming from a conviction for methamphetamine possession.

Sizemore says in an interview on CNBC's The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch set to air Monday at 10 p.m. that on a Jan. 18 visit to his probation officer, he confessed his problem.

Sizemore says he was wary of lying or hiding his meth use, and admitted to his probation officer that he "slipped," noting that "there's a difference between a slip and a relapse."

His probation was revoked in July after he admitted using a prosthetic device to fake a drug test and failing to be checked for drugs every three days. A judge reinstated probation in October after concluding Sizemore had begun to make "remarkable" progress in his battle with drugs. Sizemore then tested positive for drugs Jan. 23.

The actor, who appeared in Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, was convicted in 2003 of domestic violence involving his ex-girlfriend, former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. He is free on bail pending an appeal in that case.

[Last modified February 11, 2006, 09:37:02]