ROME (AP) – OutKast topped the winners list at the MTV Europe Music Awards, picking up three prizes, including best group.

The hip-hop stars from Atlanta also won best video and song for “Hey Ya!”

“I hope you don’t get tired of us. We only do what we do,” said OutKast’s Andre 3000 while thanking the crowd of about 6,000 Thursday at the Tor di Valle hippodrome.

Winners also included Usher, best album for “Confessions” and best male; Alicia Keys, best R&B; Britney Spears, best female; Black Eyed Peas, best pop; and Linkin Park, best rock.

The ceremony featured performances by Usher and Keys, Eminem, Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand, Swedish punk band The Hives and Gwen Stefani.

Eminem kicked off the show with “Just Lose It,” from his new album, “Encore.” The Detroit rapper appeared against a backdrop of a camouflaged tank, drummer boys and children dressed as soldiers.

Stefani was lowered onto the stage under a giant red clock in an Alice in Wonderland costume where she danced on top of a table at a set of the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

Hip-hop star Nelly was flanked by four dancing girls clad in bejeweled bikinis and feathered headdresses, while The Beastie Boys rode onstage on bicycles and a skateboard.

Rapper Xzibit, the host of the show, was rolled onto the stage on a chariot by aides dressed in black leather gladiator costumes in front of a row of fake Roman columns.

Xzibit said that the event was broadcast to a potential audience of 1 billion people in 156 countries. More than 12 million people cast votes for the awards, he said.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – An Argentine doctor accused of using the home of singer Lionel Richie’s former wife to inject clients with anti-wrinkle chemicals not approved by the Food and Drug Administration has been ordered held without bail.

A federal magistrate said Daniel Tomas Fuente Serrano, who faces four counts involving the injections, was a flight risk.

Diane Keri Richie, who was charged with two counts of aiding and abetting Serrano, was released on $25,000 bail this week after spending one night in jail.

Prosecutors said Serrano wasn’t licensed to practice in the United States and charged thousands of dollars for injections of Artecoll or Metacrill at private homes in Beverly Hills.

Serrano’s clients included Diane and Lionel Richie, and Shawn King, the wife of CNN talk-show host Larry King, according to court papers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Johns said during a bail hearing Thursday that authorities had searched three safe deposit boxes belonging to Diane Richie and Serrano that contained more than $1.1 million in cash, as well as jewelry and syringes.

Serrano’s lawyer, Edmundo Espinoza, countered that authorities haven’t proven that the injections were of either Artecoll or Metacrill.

Diane Richie filed for separation in October 2003 and divorce in January, citing irreconcilable differences. In March, she asked for $300,000 a month in child and spousal support to support the “extraordinary extravagant lifestyle” the couple had during their nearly seven years of marriage.

Ice Ice Baby wants pets back

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (AP) – Vanilla Ice wants his wallaroo back.

The 36-year-old rap performer, who had a ‘90s hit with “Ice Ice Baby,” called animal control officials Wednesday to report that a wallaroo and a goat found wandering around Port St. Lucie belong to him.

They had escaped from his back yard, city officials said.

He may have trouble getting his pets back. Neither the wallaroo, which is considered an exotic animal, nor farm animals such as the goat, are allowed in Port St. Lucie.

They were picked up Saturday by animal control after a woman reported them, saying the wallaroo, a cross between a kangaroo and a wallaby, had scratched her and kicked her car.

Vanilla Ice, whose real name is Robert Van Winkle, wasn’t at his Port St. Lucie home Wednesday. A schedule posted on his Web site said he was in California taping a motorcycle commercial.

Gayheart marries actor

LAS VEGAS (AP) – Actress Rebecca Gayheart, who first gained popularity as the “Noxzema girl” in the skin care company’s ads, has married actor Eric William Dane.

The couple married Oct. 29 in Las Vegas, according to records posted on Clark County’s Web site.

Gayheart, 32, appeared on the TV show “Beverly Hills, 90210” in the 1990s, and has more recently been seen on the FX series “Nip/Tuck” and Showtime’s “Dead Like Me.” Her movie credits include “Scream 2” and “Urban Legend.”

Dane was a regular on the ABC series “Gideon’s Crossing.”

SEATTLE (AP) – Peter Boal, an award-winning principal dancer at New York City Ballet, has been named artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Boal’s appointment to run the dance company and its school was confirmed Wednesday night by the board of trustees.

“This is an absolute gem of a company, and I’m deeply honored that I’m going to be very involved with it,” said Boal, 39, who was chosen from a field of nearly 50 applicants.

In 1996, he was given the Dance Magazine Award. Four years ago, he received a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for his solo performance in Molissa Fenley’s “State of Darkness.”

He succeeds the husband-wife team of Francia Russell and Kent Stowell, who have led the ballet and school since 1977; the couple will retire at the end of the 2004-05 season.

“Peter’s exceptional achievements as an artist, his strength of character and his impressive entrepreneurial spirit made a very positive impression with all participants in the search process,” Search Committee chairman Carl Behnke said in a statement.

TRENTON, N.J. (AP)- Who’d a-thunk it?

The Amazing Kreskin, who bills himself as “the world’s foremost mentalist,” wants to help his home state of New Jersey stem the tide of shady practices in government, a problem U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie has called widespread.

Kreskin sent a letter to acting Gov. Richard J. Codey offering his nonpartisan services to help ferret out those who come to government with ulterior motives.

Kreskin, who lives in northern New Jersey, said he would monitor government meetings with a mind’s eye toward keeping things above board.

“If a person is coming in with a strong hidden agenda, they’re thinking about it. They’re focusing on it,” he said Wednesday in a phone interview. “I could get a … strong sense (of that).”

Kreskin said he sent his letter to Codey’s office Monday, signing it, “ESPecially, Kreskin.” A spokeswoman for Codey, Kelley Heck, wasn’t sure the letter had been received.

Codey, who has a penchant for one-liners, was shown a statement Kreskin provided to news reporters. The acting governor was “interested in hearing whether The Amazing Kreskin can read Chris Christie’s mind,” Heck said.

GENEVA (AP) – Jewelry formerly belonging to Maria Callas – most of it given to the opera star by her husband, Italian industrialist Giovanni Battista Meneghini – fetched $1.86 million at an auction.

Some 200 collectors, opera fans and the plain curious packed the Sotheby’s auction room for Wednesday’s sale, which included 11 pieces, at the plush Le Beau Rivage hotel.

All the lots sold above their highest catalog estimate, said Sotheby’s Executive Director David Bennett, who ran the sale. Sotheby’s didn’t immediately identify the buyers, most of whom bid by phone.

“It was a very animated room,” Bennett said. “It was demonstratively a great success.”

The most expensive of the jewels – an 11.7-carat, marquise-shaped diamond ring – sold for $340,000. It had been expected to go for between $136,000 and $204,000, Sotheby’s said.

A diamond-and-ruby necklace that Callas often wore at recitals went for almost double its estimate, selling for $280,000.

The cheapest item in the catalog, an 18-carat yellow gold and diamond evening bag made by Van Cleef & Arpels in 1957, attracted the heaviest bidding. Listed at between $5,524 and $10,200, it sold for $44,875.

Callas married Meneghini in 1949, but later left him for Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Most of the items on sale were given to Callas in the 1950s, during the best period of her marriage and the peak of her fame.

When she died in 1977 at 53, Callas had no heirs and didn’t leave a will. She reportedly gave the jewels to a friend upon her death, and that person, whom Sotheby’s refused to identify, is selling them now.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Sarah Vowell is quite familiar with hearing her own voice – both from her work as an essayist on public radio’s “This American Life” and, she joked, from everyday activities such as talking to her dry cleaner.

But the journalist found a new place for her distinctive puckish tones in “The Incredibles,” voicing the superheroic teenage daughter, Violet, who has the power of invisibility and force fields.

“In my real life I’m more of a walking Woody Allen movie,” Vowell told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “I’m afraid to drive and I can’t swim and all that stuff so it is incredibly thrilling and fun to listen to my voice do things that, when it’s in my regular body, it would never get to do.”

Vowell, author of “Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World” and “The Partly Cloudy Patriot,” said she had turned down previous offers to play animated characters.

“My natural inclination as a writer is to underplay everything and just be very deadpan,” she said. “Animation requires a kind of bigness and a lot of exclamation points. That’s not my normal mode.”

Doing “The Incredibles” with Pixar, which made the “Toy Story” movies, “A Bug’s Life” and “Finding Nemo,” was a chance she couldn’t pass up. She remained nervous, but ultimately pleased.

“I guess I do sound kind of cartoonish. And I sound about 20 years younger than I am,” she said.

Vowell made a documentary about her work as Violet for “The Incredibles” DVD, and said she had fun supplying the voice for toys and cell phones. Her next book, “Assassination Vacation,” chronicles the offbeat tourism around places where U.S. presidents have been killed.