PREDICTED: Fresh from its Emmy wins Sunday night for outstanding comedy series and lead actress for Jennifer Aniston, "Friends" returns to the air Thursday night for its ninth and, conceivably, its final season. The Associated Press predicts that some 30 million fans will tune in to NBC to discover how the Ross-Rachel-Joey love triangle will unfold, while TV industry observers are predicting that this might not be the final season, after all. "NBC's going to milk this being the final season for all it's worth," one network chief said. "and lo and behold, it will be renewed for another year." Time will tell.

MUGGED: "Jurassic Park" author Michael Crichton, 59, was robbed at gunpoint and tied up by two men who ransacked his Santa Monica home on Monday, his publicist tells AP. The writer, who also created "ER," reportedly escaped injury. Police tell the news service that some items were taken from the house. Earlier this month, Crichton's, wife Anne Marie Martin Crichton, filed for divorce after 13 years of marriage.

EXPORTED: Miss United Kingdom Juliet-Jane Horne told AP on Thursday that she'll wear the only dress made in a tartan designed for Madonna and her director husband, Guy Ritchie, when she competes in next month's Miss International Beauty Pageant in Tokyo. The blue, yellow and purple dress was designed to mark the first wedding anniversary of the celebrity couple, who married at Skibo Castle in the Scotland Highlands in 2000.

ANNOUNCED: Paul Newman, 77, is returning to Broadway after nearly 40 years, to play the stage manager in a revival of the Thornton Wilder classic, "Our Town," according to Bill Evans, a spokesman for the production. The show opens Dec. 4 at the Booth Theatre and runs through Jan. 26. Jane Curtin and Frank Converse are among the other stars. Newman, who debuted on Broadway in 1953 (in "Picnic"), last trod the Broadway boards in the 1964 comedy "Baby Want a Kiss."

TESTIFIED: Frederic Seaman, 49, a former personal assistant to late Beatle John Lennon, admitted in Manhattan federal court Wednesday that he planned to write a book about his former employer despite signing a confidentiality pact with Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, 69, who is suing Seaman. She claims Seaman stole personal articles and sold them after Lennon was fatally shot by a deranged fan outside his New York City apartment in 1980. Seaman denies any wrongdoing.

DISCLOSED: Soul singer Barry White, 58, who is battling kidney failure brought on by years of high blood pressure, is undergoing dialysis and is hoping to receive a kidney transplant, his record label, Island Def Jam Music, tells Reuters. No further details were provided.

SOUGHT: Catherine Boyd Lloyd, ex-wife of "Taxi" and "Back to the Future" actor Christopher Lloyd, 63, is seeking $200,000 in alleged unpaid alimony, according to papers she has filed relating to their 1971 divorce. AP reports that the suit names Lloyd's current wife, Jane Walker Wood, and Lloyd's lawyer, Judith Lazenby of Watsonville, Calif., as defendants, saying they "encouraged, advised, aided and abetted" her former husband in his breach of the agreement to pay her $1,500 a month until she remarries or dies. The defendants had no comment.

FILED: The wife of Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland is seeking a divorce. Mary Weiland filed the papers in Los Angeles Superior Court on Sept. 23, citing irreconcilable differences, Allstar News reports. The couple, who have two children together (Lucy Olivia, 2 months old, and Noah Mercer, who turns 2 on Nov. 19), officially separated Sept. 19. In December 2001, Scott Weiland pleaded guilty to spousal abuse as the result of an incident at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. A judge ordered him to get therapy for drug use, says the news service.