Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 25, 1992 TAG: 9202250227
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
PEOPLE
Barry Diller abruptly resigned Monday as chairman and chief executive officer of Fox Inc. to pursue his own entertainment company.Under Diller's leadership since 1985, Fox launched the Fox Broadcasting Co. and released "Home Alone," the most successful comedy in Hollywood history. But the company's motion picture division has slumped recently with such releases as "For the Boys," "The Super," "29th Street" and "Shining Through."
Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive officer of Australia-based News Corp., will assume direct responsibility for the Fox companies.
Leona Helmsley lost a Supreme Court appeal Monday to overturn her tax-evasion conviction.
The 72-year-old billionaire hotel owner was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to four years in prison, fined $7 million and ordered to pay nearly $2 million in restitution for tax evasion from 1983 through 1985.
The court, without comment, let stand a ruling that Helmsley received a fair trial and that her federal indictment was not tainted by immunized grand jury testimony she gave in an earlier, unrelated New York state investigation.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last July ordered Helmsley resentenced. She remains free on $25 million bail.
Helmsley was convicted of billing millions of dollars in personal expenses, including $1.1 million for a swimming pool enclosure at a Connecticut estate, to the couple's hotel and real estate empire.
Syndicated talk-show host Jenny Jones says six operations for silicone implants have left her breasts hard, numb and scarred.
"I hate my body a thousand times more now than I ever did before," she said in a first-person article in People magazine's March 2 issue. "I would sell everything I own to be able to have the body back that I gave up."
Jones, 45, said her parents teased her about being flat-chested when she was a girl, and her father insisted she do exercises to develop her breasts.
In 1981 she paid $1,500 for an implant operation. Over the next 11 years, she endured five more operations to replace the implants as they hardened. Nearly a year ago, a doctor discovered one of the old implants had ruptured.
Jones said she would like to have the implants removed altogether, but doctors told her it isn't feasible. "To anybody who is considering implants: Don't do it. It's not worth the risk. Learn to love yourself," she wrote.