Networks plan fundraiser for cancer research

Networks plan fundraiser for cancer research

NEW YORK — ABC, CBS and NBC will air a simultaneous one-hour fundraiser for cancer research in prime-time Sept. 5. The “Stand Up to Cancer” broadcast will feature musical performances and celebrity appeals, although no guests were immediately announced Tuesday. The American Association for Cancer Research will distribute the money raised to specific organizations.

The three network evening news anchors — Katie Couric, Charles Gibson and Brian Williams — were to announce the plans on the network morning news shows Wednesday, but word slipped out earlier.

“For people struggling with this disease, or those who will be diagnosed, scientific breakthroughs can be a matter of life or death — literally,” said Couric, whose husband and sister both died of cancer. “We want everyone to know that they can make a difference in this fight.” Hollywood producer Laura Ziskin, a cancer survivor, will produce the event.

Team hopes to find a lost Mozart score

WARSAW, Poland — A team of musicologists is reviewing 19th-century copies of musical scores from a Polish monastery’s archives in hopes that some might prove to be previously unknown works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the lead scholar said Tuesday. The team is focused on nine scores, though the musicologists will review 2,000 from the Jasna Gora monastery in Czestochowa, southern Poland.

“The scores could be compilations from various Mozart works, or compositions by other authors just signed in his name, or — in the luckiest case for us — they could be unknown authentic Mozart,” Remigiusz Pospiech, head of the research team, told The Associated Press. “In that case we could talk of a sensation.”

But Ulrich Leisinger, head of research at the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, Austria, said it was “highly unlikely” that new works by Mozart would be discovered. “Mozart kept a catalog of all his works from 1784 on,” Leisinger told the AP in a telephone interview. “This catalog does not contain any major work we are missing.”

Today’s birthdays

Actress Carroll Baker is 77. Actor John Karlen (“Cagney and Lacey”) is 75. Actress Beth Howland (“Alice”) is 67. Singer Gladys Knight is 64. Singer Billy Vera is 64. Singer John Fogerty is 63. Actress Sondra Locke is 61. Actor Brandon Cruz (“The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”) is 46. Country singer Phil Vassar is 46. Actress Christa Miller (“Scrubs,” “The Drew Carey Show”) is 44. Singer Chris Ballew of Presidents of the United States of America is 43. Singer Kylie Minogue is 40. Rapper Chubb Rock is 40. Actor Justin Kirk (“Weeds”) is 39. “The View” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck is 31. Actress Monica Keena (“Dawson’s Creek,” “Undeclared”) is 29. Singer Colbie Caillat is 23.