For years, the private life of America's reigning sitcom queen has been grabbing the headlines: a catalogue of sexual abuse, drug and food addiction, family conflict and 'recovered memories'. But with the latest revelations that her marriage was first on, and then off, the rocks, the media began to smell a rat. Can Roseanne's personal problems really be as bad as she says? Or is it all just a manipulative attempt to boost failing ratings? Phil Reeves reports from Los Angeles

NEW YORK - Philip Morris, manufacturer of Marlboro cigarettes and the world's largest tobacco company, sued a US television network for dollars 10bn ( pounds 6.7bn) yesterday, challenging a news report that suggested it added nicotine to cigarettes to make them more addictive, writes Larry Black.

Aristotle (Telly) Savalas, actor: born Garden City, New York 21 January 1924; married Katharine Nicolaides (one daughter), 1960 Marilynn Gardner (two daughters), 1974 Sally Adams (one son), 1984 Julie Howland (one son, one daughter); died Los Angeles 22 January 1994.

The writer, producer and television mogul Steve Bochco is recalling past collisions with the American censorship body known as Network Standards.

A COMPUTER search shows 203 references to the word 'trainspotter' in the national press over the past 12 months, 179 of them pejorative. In the past week there has been the line from the failed musical Eurovision: fans of the song contest are 'like train-spotters, only camper'. A piece in Today on wigs warned of looking like a 'trainspotter with a dead tarantula on his napper'. In the Independent Magazine a week ago, the Weasel column wondered why Channel 4 'stuck so doggedly to replicating Mr Gerry Adams's desperately dull, train- spotter tones.'

SHARES in Body Shop International - at 169p - are starting to look attractive now that they no longer trade on the ludicrous multiples of the past. Anita and Gordon Roddick, fresh from their libel case victory against Channel 4, have also sent US investigative journalists packing. ABC News last week abandoned its plans for a programme into the potions franchise.

THE American television network, NBC, has won the US broadcasting rights to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta with a bid of dollars 456m (pounds 285m), according to an International Olympic Commitee report from New York on Tuesday.

THE LEAVING OF LIVERPOOL (9.30pm BBC1) kicked up a storm when it was shown in Australia, becoming the highest rated mini-series of last year. The two-part ABC-BBC co-production (written by John Alsop and Sue Cook, who wrote the similar and similarly effective Brides of Christ) tells of a handful of the thousands of British orphans who were forcibly dispatched to Australia in the 1940s and 1950s (the practice continued until 1967).

The US Justice Department has decided to take Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman into custody but will not charge him in connection with an alleged bombing conspiracy in New York, a US television channel reported yesterday. The blind sheikh 'may soon be picked up for violation of immigration laws,' ABC television said in its evening newscast, citing government sources, Reuter reports from Washington.

IT WENT exactly according to the script. Nigel Benn duly destroyed the hapless Lou Gent in four savage rounds to retain his World Boxing Council super-middleweight title on Saturday at London's Olympia, thus setting up a return with Chris Eubank on 9 October.

WASHINGTON - Just an egregious example of crocodile tears - or is there the faint glimmer of a chance that an era of peace and loving kindness is about to dawn on the killing fields of the American television networks? Whatever else, though, it was a bizarre spectacle on Capitol Hill last week. A selection of top television executives were testifying to the Senate's Judiciary Sub-committee on the Constitution. Shamefacedly, the assembled luminaries confessed they were 'not proud' of the programmes in the latest instalment of the 'May ratings sweep', the regular spring battle for viewers among the major networks, which determine the all-important advertising rates they may charge during the summer months.

STEVE CAUTHEN is to put his race-riding experience to use from the safety of the commentary box. He will work as a television analyst during the ABC network coverage of the American Triple Crown races.

Edward P. Morgan, journalist and broadcaster, born Walla Walla Washington 23 June 1910, correspondent United Press 1934-43, Chicago Daily News 1943-46, Colliers Weekly 1946-48, CBS 1951-54, Director CBS Radio and Television News 1954, news commentator ABC 1955-67, Peabody award 1956, chief correspondent Public Broadcasting Laboratory 1967-68, columnist Newsday Syndicate 1966-75, television commentator ABC 1960-75, George Polk Memorial Award 1965, married 1937 Jane Stolle (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1945), 1960 Katharine Burden Sohier (marriage dissolved), died McLean Virginia 27 January 1993.

AMERICA HAS a new media phenomenon. Her name is Amy Fisher and her exploits have been the subject of TV movies on all three networks, watched by almost a third of the country. There are no perfume or clothing lines bearing her name yet, but there is time for that.