FIRST LOOK: The News in Brief, January 29, 2003

GIVING NOTICE: Media mogul and Jane Fonda's ex Ted Turner announcing he will step down as vice chairman of AOL Time Warner at the company's annual shareholders meeting in May. Turner says he wants to focus on his philanthropic work.

D'OH! Meryl Streep may have missed out on a Best Supporting SAG nomination because a Sony employee mistakenly submitted the thespian's name in the Best Actress category for Adaptation.

EXPOSED! Joe Millionaire's Evan Marriott isn't the only one with a secret. Gold-digger Sarah Kozer has starred in dozens of kinky bondage and fetish films, according to The Smoking Gun. Needless to say, Fox did not include the racy credits in Kozer's bio.

ROCKER CHIC: Gwen Stefani can add designer to her list of credits. The No Doubt singer will team up with LeSportsac to create a line of rock chick-inspired accessories, due in stores spring 2004.

JONES STILL SOLID: Norah Jones maintaining her top spot on the charts for the third week in a row with her debut album, Come Away with Me. The soundtrack for Chicago jumped to number two followed by Avril Lavigne's Let Go.

MORE MUSIC: Jones will join fellow Grammy nominees Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Nelly (with Kelly Rowlands) and Faith Hill as performers at the 45th annual Grammy Awards on February 23 at Madison Square Garden.

VIRTUAL ASS-WHUPPING: Fans of ABC's Alias will be able to indulge in their own secret-agent adventures when a video game from Acclaim Entertainment is released this fall for Disney Interactive.

AUSSIE OFFENSE: The Epilepsy Foundation is crying foul over an epileptic character they claim is the butt of mean-spirited jokes in the Down Under caper Kangaroo Jack. The group wants Warner Bros. to remove the offensive sequences from the video and DVD.

WIRED: Matt Damon and director Steven Soderbergh will team up on The Informant, based on a real whistle-blower who exposed corruption at agribusiness Archer Daniels Midland. The two last worked together on Ocean's Eleven.

GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE: The guitars of late Who rocker John Entwistle are to be auctioned off at Sotheby's May 13. Entwistle died of a cocaine-fueled heart attack last June. He was 57.

THEY GOT GAME: MTV and Magic Johnson teaming up to produce Who's Got Game, a search for the best street-basketball players in the country. Twelve finalists will have a chance to win $100,000 and have a hometown court named in their honor.

MAL-PRACTICE David Kelley is fuming over The Practice's Monday night move, reports Variety. The legal drama received its worst ratings in years (8.9 million viewers) this week against Joe Millionaire, which scored another high (20.3 million viewers).

THANKS, BUT NO THANKS: Peter O'Toole, 70, asking the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to defer his honorary award until he turns 80. The Academy, which announced the honor this week, will proceed as planned.

BUSTED! More than 10,000 pirated copies of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers have been seized in England over the last few weeks. The copies allegedly came from Malaysia, where they appear to have been pirated from screener copies sent out to Academy voters.

IN MEMORIAM: Nedra Volz, who played housekeeper Adelaide Brubaker on Diff'rent Strokes and postmistress Miz Emma Tisdale on The Dukes of Hazzard, died January 20 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. She was 94.

PASSINGS: Halle Berry's father Jerome Jessie Berry, who was suffering from Parkinson's disease, passed away in a nursing home. He was 68. The Oscar-winner was reportedly estranged from her father.

AND THEN THERE WERE 32: It's crash and burn night on Fox as American Idol's 234 contestants get whittled down to 32 semifinalists at 8:30 p.m.

SO LONG, SAM? Sam Donaldson is rumored to be considering a new hosting gig with MSNBC, which would mean the end of his tenure with ABC News.

DEADLINE APPROACHING: Oscar nomination ballots due back from voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to PricewaterhouseCoopers by 5 p.m. PT today. Ballots received after the deadline are ineligible. Oscar nods will be announced at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater on February 11.

60 MINUTE KUDOS: Producers and correspondents past and present of CBS' 60 Minutes will receive the 2003 Lifetime Achivement Award at the Emmys. Among the recipients, executive producer Don Hewitt (who announced he was leaving this week), Mike Wallace, Dan Rather and Diane Sawyer.

DIVA BOOT CAMP: VHI is seeking some high-maintenance pipes for its new reality series, Destination Diva: Search for a Superstar. Wannabe starlets from around the country will be shipped to "diva boot camp" in New York in preparation for the finals.