Palin pushes "SNL" ratings to 14-year high

People

Live, from New York ...

Sarah Palin was a big hit on "Saturday Night Live." NBC scored its highest ratings for the late-night show in 14 years, with an estimated 14 million viewers, and 17 million for the first half-hour. Nothing has done better since skater Nancy Kerrigan visited after her Olympics drama with Tonya Harding in 1994.

Judith Miller tries TV

Fox News is expected to announce today the hiring of a new contributor, Judith Miller, a veteran national-security correspondent who has shared a Pulitzer Prize. Miller left The New York Times in 2005 after testifying in the trial of former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby that he had leaked her information about a CIA operative. Miller's conduct in the case, which led to her serving 85 days in jail for initially refusing to testify, drew rebukes from the Times executive editor and some of her colleagues. In the run-up to the Iraq war, Miller reported stories on the search for Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be untrue, some of which were cited in a Times editor's note acknowledging the flawed coverage. Miller will be an on-air analyst and write for Fox's Web site.

That's Liza with a "Z"

Liza Minnelli will return to Broadway in December for the first time in nearly a decade in a two-week engagement of "Liza's at the Palace." Minnelli will play the legendary vaudeville house Dec. 3-14. She will be accompanied by pianist-musical supervisor Billy Stritch, a 12-piece orchestra and four dancer-singers. The show will feature some of Minnelli's best-known songs, particularly numbers such as "Cabaret," "Maybe This Time" and "New York, New York," all written by John Kander and Fred Ebb.

Hip-hop honors its own

Lil Wayne was named lyricist of the year and Russell Simmons was honored as a hip-hop icon at this year's BET Hip-Hop Awards taped Saturday in Atlanta. The show, which was hosted by T-Pain and featured a hip-hop matriarch medley that included MC Lyte, Yo-Yo and Salt-N-Pepa, will air Thursday.

Box Office

Wahlberg whups "W"

Moviegoers elected a "W," but it was Mark Wahlberg, not George W. Bush. Wahlberg's action flick "Max Payne" debuted with $18 million to outdo Oliver Stone's film biography of George W. Bush, according to studio estimates Sunday. Stone's "W." actually ran fourth, opening with $10.6 million to finish behind the family comedy "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" (No. 2 with $11.2 million) and the chick flick "The Secret Life of Bees" (No. 3 with $11.1 million).

Passages

Dee Dee Warwick, 63, a soul singer who won recognition for both her solo work and her performances with her older sister Dionne Warwick, died Saturday at a nursing home in Essex County, N.J.

Today in History

1803: The U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

1968: Former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

1973: In the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre," special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox was dismissed and Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned.

1977: Three members of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd were killed in the crash of a chartered plane near McComb, Miss.

2003: A judge in Eagle, Colo., ordered Kobe Bryant to stand trial for sexual assault. (However, the criminal case was later dropped.)

Today's Birthdays

Actor William Christopher, 76. Singer Tom Petty, 58. Actor Viggo Mortensen, 50. Rapper Snoop Dogg, 37. Singer Dannii Minogue, 37. Actor John Krasinski, 29. Actress Jennifer Nicole Freeman, 23.

Seattle Times news services