FIRST LOOK: The News in Brief, March 7, 2004

COMEBACK: R&B crooner Luther Vandross winning four NAACP Image Awards Saturday including Best Male Artist, Best Music Video, Best Song and Best Album for Dance with My Father. Vandross, who's still recovering from a stroke, did not attend.

IMAGE AWARDS ADD: Cuba Gooding Jr. won Best Actor for his Gospel music movie The Fighting Temptations, which also grabbed Best Film while Queen Latifah earned Best Actress for Bringing Down the House. Television's The Bernie Mac Show picked up best comedy.

ENCORE! Famed Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti returning to the Metropolitan Opera though not for long for the first of three farewell performances of Puccini's Tosca.

MORE KUDOS: Robbie Williams grabbing Best International Shania Twain won Best International Female Artist at the German music industry's Echo awards. Evanescence took Best Group.

ECHO ADD: One year after undergoing breast cancer surgery which saved her life, Anastacia gave a show-stopping performance of "Heavy on my Heart."

THE DON IN DEBT: A California bank filing legal papers to force actor Don Johnson to put his Aspen-area property up for sale at auction to pay a nearly $1 million debt. The bank said Johnson has refused to make payments on a loan he took out in October 2002.

MARTHA FALLOUT: The New York Times reporting that CBS's New York affiliate, WCBS, has pulled the plug on Martha Stewart's syndicated television show, Martha Stewart Living, following the domestic maven's stock conviction. Other CBS stations may follow suit.

THE VERDICT IS IN! A jury in Manhattan finding Stewart guilty yesterday on all four counts against her stemming from her stock-dumping trial: conspiracy, obstruction of justice and two counts of making false statements. The domestic diva faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count.

MARTHA ADD: Stewart's stock broker, Peter Bacanovic found guilty on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. He faces up to five years and a $250,000 fine on each count. Both Stewart and Bocanovic are set to be sentenced on June 17.

OOPS! In the rush to report the Stewart verdict live on television Friday, both CNBC and MSNBC at first reporting she was not guilty on some of the four charges against her, before quickly correcting themselves.

MARTHA SPEAKS: Stewart said she was "distressed" by the jury's verdict, and hopes to be exonerated on appeal. "I continue to take comfort in knowing that I have done nothing wrong and that I have the enduring support of my family and friends," read a statement from her Website. "I will...continue to fight to clear my name...and remain confident that I will ultimately prevail."

BUSTED: Sixties rocker David Crosby arrested on marijuana and gun possession charges early Saturday after leaving a piece of luggage behind at a Times Square hotel. An employee who searched the bag for identification called police after finding marijuana, a .45-caliber handgun and two knives.

FLEXIBLE: While attending his annual Arnold Fitness Weekend in Columbus, Ohio, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger planning to announce he'll moonlight as executive editor of Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines, his spokesman said on Friday.

REMEMBERED: Ralph E. Winters, a two-time Academy Award-winning film editor whose career spanned seven decades and featured Oscars for Ben-Hur and King Solomon's Mines, died of natural causes on February 26 in Los Angeles. He was 94.

THE PRINCESS DIARIES: NBC's special airing audio tapes secretly recorded by the late Princess Diana that exposed the turmoil of her marriage to Prince Charles drawing nearly 17 million viewers Thursday night, Nielsen Media reports.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: New York Times ordering culture reporter, Jesse McKinley, to reimburse The Oprah Winfrey Show for renovations after violating the paper's code of ethics by allowing Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's Thom Filicia to fix up his apartment for a segment on Winfrey's show.

BRANCHING OUT: Spike Lee in talks with rookie basketball phenom LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers to develop and star in an upcoming movie. No word what it's about.

SECOND HELPING: Former Facts of Life star Mindy Cohn, who played plucky Natalie on the 1980s sitcom, returning to the tube as Maggie the Cook in the new WB sitcom The Help, about a rich family and their hired help, which premiered Friday.

TO THE BOARDS: A musical version of The Color Purple, Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, making its world premiere in September at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre before a likely Broadway run.

BABS WON'T PAY: Barbra Streisand allegedly refusing to pay the $220,000 legal bills of a man she sued for invasion of privacy, the Smoking Gun reports. She was ordered to pay the bills after a judge dismissed the suit.

RESTYLED: New Line giving the go-ahead for a big-screen musical remake of Hairspray, John Waters' 1988 campy cult film about the 1960s dance craze, now a Tony-winning smash on Broadway.

A MAN AND HIS ELEPHANT: Kevin Costner in talks to direct and possibly star in Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant that Ever Lived, a Black Stallion-type love story about a man and an elephant both born in a German circus who grow up together.

OLD FRIENDS: Paul Reiser lobbying Friends star Lisa Kudrow to guest in his upcoming NBC comedy pilot My 11:30, starring Jeff Goldblum as a playboy New York businessman who seeks counseling from a no-nonsense female shrink.

ON THE RUN: X-Men helmer Bryan Singer coming aboard to direct a remake of Logan's Run, 1976's cult sci-fi flick about a man in a utopian society of youth and perfection trying to escape a mandatory death sentence on his 21st birthday.