QuickTakes: Vanessa Williams’ ‘Desperate’ move

Vanessa Williams is headed to Wisteria Lane next fall on “Desperate Housewives.”

ABC said Tuesday that she’ll play a “wicked new housewife” as the series enters its seventh season.

Williams will hit the neighborhood fresh from performing in the Broadway musical “Sondheim on Sondheim,” which runs through June. She starred in the recently concluded TV series “Ugly Betty.”

—Associated Press

Guns N’ Roses spans media

The latest Guns N’ Roses project is not an album, a video or a book: It’s all three.

The band has completed a multimedia edition of the biography “Reckless Road,” in which author Marc Canter tells of the making of Guns N’ Roses’ multimillion-selling debut “Appetite for Destruction.”

The video book goes on sale Wednesday and was produced by Vook, a California-based digital publisher. It will include text, studio and concert footage and interviews with band members, but not lead singer Axl Rose.

—Associated Press

Boston Pops plays ‘Dream’

The Boston Pops has taken the wraps off a musical tribute to the Kennedys.

The world premiere of “The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers” came Tuesday night at Symphony Hall. Celebrity narrators Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris read from some of the most famous speeches of President John F. Kennedy and Sens. Robert and Edward Kennedy.

Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart commissioned composer Peter Boyer and lyricist Lynn Ahrens to write the piece, which will be performed several other times this spring and during the Pops summer season.

—Associated Press

Police recover Greek statues

Police in southern Greece have seized a rare twin pair of 2,500-year-old marble statues and arrested two farmers who allegedly planned to sell them abroad for $12.43 million, authorities said Tuesday.

Police said two Greeks, ages 42 and 48, were arrested in the Peloponnese area late Friday as they were loading the illegally excavated figures of young men into a truck. Authorities are seeking a third man suspected of belonging to a smuggling gang that planned to spirit the 6th century B.C. works out of the country.

Archaeologists said Tuesday that the statues are “outstanding works of art” and may have come from a temple or cemetery in a lost ancient city in the Peloponnese region in southern Greece. Both are in excellent condition but lack sections of their lower legs and were gashed by a plow or digging machinery.

They stand 5 feet 9 inches and 5 feet 8 inches high and were probably carved by the same sculptor out of thick-grained island marble between 550 and 520 BC.

—Associated Press

‘Idol,’ ‘Stars’ top ratings

Singing and dancing competitions again dominated prime time last week. Fox’s two “American Idol” shows and ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” each drew from 19 million to 20 million viewers to top the ratings, the Nielsen Co. reported Tuesday.

But CBS programs captured the next 10 spots on the list and the network finished first for the ninth time in the last 10 weeks, averaging 10.48 million viewers for its prime-time lineup. ABC was second, followed by Fox, NBC and the CW.

Viewership for NBC’s coverage of Sunday’s Miss USA Pageant was 59th for the week, averaging 5.28 million viewers, the second lowest in the 37 years for which figures are available, ahead of only last year’s 5 million.

The list of the top-rated shows will appear in Calendar later this week.

—From wire services

Ling recounts her capture

An American who was imprisoned in North Korea for months after briefly crossing into the reclusive country while researching the sex trade said she told interrogators in a ploy for mercy that she was trying to overthrow the government.

In her first televised interview since her August release, Laura Ling said on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” that aired Tuesday that she was told the worst could happen if she didn’t confess.

Ling said she drew suspicion because she worked for San Francisco-based Current TV, a media venture founded by former Vice President Al Gore.

—Associated Press