FIRST LOOK: The News in Brief, October 23, 2000

CELEB SICK BAY II: Actress and model Lauren Hutton was in serious but stable condition Monday after being hospitalized for injuries she sustained in a weekend motorcycle crash.

THE END IN SIGHT: A tentative agreement has been reached to end the six-month-long actors strike against the advertising industry. The Screen Actors Guild says its members could be back to work as early as next Monday.

PARENTS POWER: Meet the Parents again was the top box-office draw, earning $16 million to beat Bedazzled, according to final studio tallies Monday.

CHANGE OF PLANS: Columbia Pictures reaching an agreement to continue with its Muhammad Ali biopic after director Michael Mann agrees to make good on cost overruns. The project was nearly scrapped due to budget concerns.

POP HISTORY MATERIAL: Next month, Mastro Fine Sports Auctions, of Oak Brook, Illinois, is auctioning off Madonna's first recording contract she ever signed. Madonna signed and initialed it four times on August 16, 1981. The opening bid is $3,500.

STUNT CASTING: Anne Heche joining the cast of Ally McBeal for three episodes. Heche will play a high-maintenance client of John Cage's (Peter MacNicol) in what a show rep describes as a "challenging comedic role."

GET IT FREE, NOW: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers releasing their new song, "Surrender," today on MP3.com.

GARTH TO THE RESCUE! Garth Brooks credited with helping save two brothers in Collinsville, Oklahoma, after alerting them that a fast-moving grass fire was heading toward their house.

NOW WE KNOW: During during an interview with NBC, ex-Good Morning America cohost Joan Lunden finally admitting she was forced out of the show by ABC executives in 1997 when its ratings fell.

BUNDLE OF JOY: TLC's Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and hubby, rapper Mack 10, welcomed their first child, a daughter named Chase, on Friday.

BUNDLE OF JOY II: Country music sweethearts Clint Black and Lisa Hartman Black are due to have first child in early May. "There's going to be a lot more sweetness around our house next year," the couple said Monday.

GOING GREEN: R.E.M. performed in their hometown for the first time in eight years Sunday, backing efforts by the Athens Grow Green Coalition to slow urban growth in the area. "Athens is special to me, and most of us want to keep it that way," singer Michael Stipe, 40, said after the concert.

REBOUND: Saturday's first game of the World Series scored a 14.0 rating for Fox and a 25 share, according to Nielsen overnights--just about the same as the ratings for the opening games of the last three World Series. In New York the game pulled a whopping 41.6/62.

NEW HOME: Home Improvement alum Jonathan Taylor Thomas sealing a deal to star in a new prime-time series for Fox. Thomas will be placed in either a comedy or drama under the six-figure deal.

POWER LUNCH: CBS president and CEO Les Moonves, whose hit show Survivor brought the network much-needed younger viewers, ranking number1 on Entertainment Weekly's annual list of the 101 Most Powerful People in Entertainment. Julia Roberts is second, followed by Tom Cruise.

RESURRECTION! The late John Huston's long-lost screenplay Amparo, about a burned-out screenwriter, will be brought to the big screen next year by producer John Morrissey and directed by the legendary filmmaker's son, Danny Huston.