Winfrey showers Macon, Ga., audience with gifts

Oprah Winfrey, kicking off a series of shows highlighting towns across the United States, concluded a taping in Macon on Saturday by doling out gifts large and small to audience members.

Under the theme “Oprah's favorite things,” she showered the crowd with presents ranging from refrigerators to camcorders to wrapping paper. The show will air Tuesday.

Winfrey also toured downtown Macon and stopped by Nu-Way, a well-known hot dog restaurant, Friday afternoon.

Afterward, she proclaimed the hot dogs her favorite thing about the visit.

Macon spent as much as $20,000 to ready City Auditorium for Winfrey's visit. Her company, Harpo Productions, has offered to reimburse the city for some of the improvements to the historic building.

Browne campaigning in Iowa for Edwards

Jackson Browne says that Democrat John Edwards is the most progressive candidate with a chance at winning the White House, and that he would do the most for working-class Americans.

“It's a challenge to hook yourself up to what a politician says he's going to do, and see if he's going to do it,” the singer-songwriter said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “I think it's a really critical time in our country and our world, and I think that working people need a champion, and I think that John Edwards is that person.”

Famous for hits including “Running on Empty” and “The Pretender,” Browne will be joined by Grammy Award-winning colleague Bonnie Raitt next week at five of Edwards' campaign stops in Iowa.

The two are co-founders of Musicians United For Safe Energy, along with Graham Nash and John Hall. In 1979, the group played a series of “No-Nukes” concerts, drumming up activism to thwart the spread of nuclear power. The group now works through Nukefree.org and opposes a federal bailout of the nuclear energy industry.

Two charged in attack involving ‘Chef' contestant

Two women have been charged in the case of a former contestant on Bravo's “Top Chef” who said she was beaten by attackers yelling anti-gay slurs over Labor Day weekend.

Nassau County police announced the arrests on Saturday after Josie Smith-Malave, who was featured on the second season of the reality show, had accused investigators last week of not pursuing her case vigorously.

Smith-Malave, who is openly lesbian, said she and three other women were assaulted by about a dozen people after being told to leave a Sea Cliff bar on Sept. 1, according to police. The attackers yelled slurs about the women's perceived sexual orientation, spat on them and hit them, police said.

- From wire reports