Gwinnett Daily Post

Longtime CBS News producer Birnbaum dies

NEW YORK -- A CBS News producer who worked with Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt and helped craft reports on subjects ranging from poverty to the Watergate scandal has died.

A network statement said Bernard Birnbaum died Thursday at Stony Brook University Medical Center in Stony Brook, N.Y., after having a heart attack while visiting relatives nearby. He was 89.

Birnbaum's CBS career won him seven Emmy Awards and took him to places ranging from Vietnam to the small-town America seen in ''On the Road with Charles Kuralt.'' Birnbaum and Kuralt first joined forces on the acclaimed 1964 documentary ''Christmas in Appalachia.''

Swiss ready Polanski chalet for house arrest

GSTAAD, Switzerland -- Swiss security experts are preparing Roman Polanski's Alpine chalet for the movie director's house arrest.

A commercial security service team has entered the home in the exclusive resort of Gstaad.

They declined to say what they were doing during the Saturday visit, but the company handles a range of services -- from video surveillance to alarm installations and armored doors.

A condition of Polanski's house arrest is that he be fitted with an electronic monitoring bracelet that would detect if he tries to leave the chalet. That would cause him to lose the $4.5 million in bail he is required to post.

'Pulp Fiction' writer taken off jail furlough

VENTURA, Calif. -- ''Pulp Fiction'' co-screenwriter Roger Avary has been removed from a prison work furlough program and locked up, authorities said.

Avary was sentenced in September to a year in jail and five years probation for causing a drunken driving car crash that killed a passenger and injured Avary's wife. News reports said he has been serving his time in a work furlough program.

But on Friday, Ventura County sheriff's spokesman Capt. Ross Bonfiglio said the 44-year-old Avary had been locked up in the county jail.

The Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star reported that he was removed from the furlough program and jailed after allegedly Twittering about his experiences since being sentenced.