FIRST LOOK: The News in Brief, July 27, 2005

CHECKING OUT: Mindy McCready checking out of a Florida hospital Tuesday after spending four days in intensive care after an alleged suicide attempt. The country singer was found unconscious Friday from an apparent drug overdose.

IT'S OVER: Former E! personality and current Rock Star: INXS host Brooke Burke splitting with her husband, Garth Fisher, People reports. The couple, married since 2001, are living apart but remain amicable, according to the magazine.

DAYTIME TO DVD: Oprah Winfrey releasing a 20th anniversary DVD in November featuring highlights from two decades of The Oprah Winfrey Show, per the Hollywood Reporter.

SQUEEZING THE JUICE: A judge ordering O.J. Simpson to pay DirecTV $25,000 for allegedly stealing satellite television signals.

GETTING NAKED: Lil' Kim preparing to release her fourth solo album, The Naked Truth, on Sept. 13, before she begins serving her year-and-a-day prison sentence on Sept. 19.

CHART ATTACK: Now That's What I Call Music! 19 topping the charts with 436,000 copies sold, per Nielsen SoundScan data.

DIAPER DUTY: Hugh Jackman and his wife, Deborra-lee Furness, adopting a baby girl, Ava Eliot, born July 10. The couple already have a 5-year-old adopted son, Oscar.

GIVE IT BACK: Legendary comedian Richard Pryor filing a lawsuit Wednesday against director Penelope Spheeris over a 1968 film Pryor says he owns the rights to and Spheeris currently has in her possession. The Wayne's World director was hired to work on the film, best-known as Uncle Tom's Fairy Tales, when she was just a film student.

IMAGINE A DELAY: Lennon, the problem-plagued musical about the life of John Lennon, pushing back its opening date again to Aug. 14. The production was originally slated to open July 28, but delayed the opening to Aug. 4.

TICK TOCK: Carlos Bernard returning as Tony Almeida in the fifth season of Fox's 24.

MOURNED: Danny Simon, a comedy writer and the older brother of Neil Simon, died Tuesday of complications with a stroke. He was 86.

SICK BAY: Veteran stunt coordinator Christopher Sayour injured on the set of Smallville Tuesday and taken to a Vancouver hospital, where he was said to be in serious condition.

VICTORY: Kate Moss winning substantial libel damages from London's Sunday Mirror over a January report that claimed the model had collapsed in a cocaine-fueled coma. The paper was ordered to issue a public apology and to shell out an undisclosed sum.

EXTRA TIME: Oscar voters getting an extra week to fill out their ballots this year after the Academy pushed back the awards ceremony to Mar. 5, so as not to compete with the closing ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics on Feb. 26.

DESPERATE PROMOTION: ABC hoping to catch Desperate Housewives viewers at the cleaners by promoting the show's second season on the sides of dry cleaning bags with a slogan reading, "New Season. New Dirty Laundry."

DANCING ANSWERS: Kelly Monaco, the underdog who beat out John O'Hurley to win Dancing with the Stars, telling the Television Critics Association that she knows there are viewers unhappy with her victory, but that she's not going to let it bother her.

REMATCH: Meanwhile, ABC announcing that it is seriously considering staging a dance-off between Monaco and O'Hurley.

LET'S FORM VOLTRON! Per the Hollywood Reporter, producer Mark Gordon teaming up with music producer Pharrell Williams and World Events Prods. to make a big-budget feature version of the popular 1980s giant robot cartoon Voltron: Defender of the Universe.

BEAT IT TO THE HOSPITAL: Michael Jackson checked into the hospital suffering from dehydration and weight loss after being acquitted last month on child molestation charges, his lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, revealed to BBC radio Tuesday.

POTTY TRAINING: A dozen newspapers across the country have either yanked or edited Tuesday and Wednesday's edition of Doonesbury after receiving some complaints over toilet humor, specifically when a caricature of President Bush refers to his senior adviser, Karl Rove, as "turd blossom."

BABY ALIAS: Jennifer Garner's character on Alias, Sydney Bristow, will be expecting a child this fall with Vaughn (Michael Vartan, series mastermind J.J. Abrams confirmed. The star, who's pregnant in real life with Ben Affleck's baby, is expected to be in every episode next season.