Polanski's chalet being readied for house arrest

GSTAAD, Switzerland -- Security experts on Saturday started preparing Roman Polanski's Alpine chalet for the movie director's house arrest while Swiss authorities consider whether to extradite him to the United States.

A Hummer bearing the sign in French "DR Securite Services" was parked outside the empty three-story building Saturday morning, while three men and a woman took photographs of the property and spent about an hour inside.

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

One of the key court-imposed conditions 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, which would cost him the $4.5 million bail he is required to post.

Authorities require that the bracelet be working before Polanski is moved to the chalet, probably Monday. Until then, Polanski would remain in a jail outside Zurich, Justice Ministry spokesman Folco Galli said.

Screenwriter nixed from work furlough program, back to jail

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

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 say 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.

But Bonfiglio told The Associated Press that he was jailed over security issues and Twittering wasn't a key factor. Avary attorney Mark Werskman denied Twittering caused his incarceration.

Avary and Quentin Tarantino share the 1995 Academy Award for writing "Pulp Fiction."

CBS News producer has died

NEW YORK -- CBS News producer Bernard Birnbaum, who helped shape the public's view of issues ranging from poverty to the Watergate scandal while working alongside Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt, has died, the network said.

Birnbaum died on Thanksgiving Day at Stony Brook University Medical Center in Stony Brook, N.Y., after having a heart attack while visiting relatives nearby, CBS News said in a statement Saturday. His death had been announced on the network news broadcast Friday. 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."

He and Kuralt first joined forces on the acclaimed 1964 documentary "Christmas in Appalachia," about unemployed miners in Kentucky. Birnbaum joined CBS as a lighting director in 1951 and worked into this decade, producing short documentaries for "Sunday Morning."