FIRST LOOK: The News in Brief, June 6, 2002

RELEASED: R&B star R. Kelly posting $750,000 bail Thursday afternoon after spending the night in a Florida jail. Kelly was arrested there Wednesday after a Chicago grand jury indicted him on 21 counts of child pornography. The bust stems from a videotape Kelly allegedly made of himself having sex with an underage girl.

MOURNED: Dee Dee Ramone, a founding member of the seminal New York punk band the Ramones, found dead Wednesday night in his Hollywood home. The bassist was 49. The cause of death has not been determined, but an L.A. County Coroner's spokesperson says the case will be handled as a possible accidental drug overdose.

BEAT IT: Michael Jackson teaming with the Reverend Al Sharpton and former O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran to form a coalition investigating how artists are being treated by their record labels. Jackson himself is unhappy with the way Sony has handled his newest album, Invincible, and he's now looking to get out of his contract.

ANOTHER SEVEN INNINGS: MSNBC signing Hardball host Chris Matthews to a new contract keeping him around through 2009. His political talk show will now move to 9 p.m. ET, and Matthews will anchor MSNBC's election coverage this year and in 2004.

STILL SHADY: Eminem's latest disc, The Eminem Show, selling 1.3 million copies in its first week, topping the Billboard charts for the second week in a row. It's also the biggest single-week sales total of the year.

PHONE HOME: Universal Home Video announcing that E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial will arrive on DVD October 22--but will only be available for 10 weeks. The double-disc "Limited Edition" (retailing for $22.95) will feature both the original and rereleased versions of the movie, as well as some 10 hours of extras.

MORE MAGIC: The DVD release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone pulling in some $400 million in its first week, Warner Bros. Home Video is reporting. The studio sold nearly 10 million copies on DVD and VHS, reportedly topping the 9 million sold by Shrek last fall.

HOT SEAT: The syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, hosted by Meredith Vieira, getting a September 16 premiere date.

QUIT PLAYING GAMES: Ohio Senator George Voinovich calling for a crackdown on celebrity testimony on Capitol Hill, after Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson testified today before a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee about the controversial practice of mountaintop removal mining.

BACK ON TRACK: Witchblade star Yancy Butler expected to return to the set of her TNT series Monday, after spending a month in rehab for alcohol abuse.

"JESUS" IS NOT ALRIGHT WITH THEM: ABC drawing criticism from the Reverend Jerry Falwell after it bleeped out the word "Jesus" from a recent episode of The View. A network spokeswoman said ABC doesn't allow the use of the word as an exclamation--only in a "prayerful and respectful" manner. Falwell called it a "double standard."

BLAME STUFF: A tour manager for Limp Bizkit blaming concert organizers for the death of a fan during the band's performance at the Big Day Out festival in Sydney, Australia last year. Jessica Michalik died after suffering a heart attack when she was caught in the crowd crush.

FORM OF...A NEW MOVIE! Warner Bros. and Gaylord Films teaming to make a live-action movie based on Hanna-Barbera's cartoon superheros The Wonder Twins. The Wonder Twins, part of the late '70s SuperFriends cartoons, unleashed their powers by touching hands and shouting "Wonder Twin powers...activate!"

CASHING IN: The six broadcast networks taking in an estimated $7.7 billion in advertising during their annual "upfronts" with advertisers. That's up more than $1 billion over last year. NBC led the upfront with $2.7 billion in sales.

WE SEE GREAT FORTUNE: Former Miami Vice costar Philip Michael Thomas awarded $2.3 million by an arbitrator for his work in phone psychic commercials. The settlement ends an eight-year dispute in which Thomas claimed Traffix Inc. owed him $12 million.

CORPSE WATCH: MGM in talks to acquire rocker Rob Zombie's horror flick The House of 1000 Corpses, after Universal executives deemed it too horrifying to release, Variety reports. The film has been edited to receive an R rating, and it's tentatively scheduled for a Halloween release.

CRAZY TRAIN HALTED: The final seven European shows of the Ozzfest tour canceled with no explanation, Launch.com reports. The North American leg of the tour is still expected to kick off July 6 in Bristow, Virginia.

SUBTITLES, PLEASE: Brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher of the rock band Oasis telling NME.com that they would love to participate in an Osbournes-style reality show.

CODA: Award-winning Basque composer Carmelo Alonso Bernaola, a Spanish music great who wrote symphonies for hundreds of movies and TV productions, died Wednesday in Madrid. He was 72.