News In Brief

THEY KNOW HOW IT FEELS If all goes according to plan, the show will have an all-star cast, headed by two Hollywood leading men, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Will it be an action flick? Well, sort of. The two, who deal with prying camera lenses off the set as well as on, have agreed to appear in a documentary on paparazzi. They're the controversial folks who follow celebrities around, hoping to record them in unguarded poses that they can sell to magazines or TV shows. It's a project of Britain's Prince Edward, himself a TV producer. Reports say it will include a segment on his sister-in-law, Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in a car crash while being chased by photographers.

STANDING A LITTLE TALLER While we weren't looking, the Washington Monument apparently has grown in stature. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says its preliminary data, gathered by the Global Positioning System, put the height of the pointy landmark at 555 feet, 5.9 inches. Historically, the figure had been 555 feet, 5-1/2 inches.

'Local' interests are focus of new Internet-bookseller lists Amazon.com, the Internet bookseller, has developed "local" bestseller lists of titles its customers are reading. They're generated by using a computer algorithm that weighs bestsellers in certain regions against overall bestsellers to spotlight books that are selling well in specific locations or among identifiable groups of people. A sampling of titles that currently rank high on some of the lists:

Fairbanks, Alaska - "Hide Your Assets and Disappear: A Step-by-Step Guide to Vanishing Without a Trace"

Harvard Business School - "Technology Innovation"

Germany - "The 7 Habits of Highly Effect People"

Palo Alto, Calif. - "The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams"

Beverly Hills, Calif., "The Last Mogul"

US Navy - "Black Hawk Down" - Reuters

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