NEWS LITE : FOREIGN PRESS TO SPOTLIGHT STREISAND AS TOP HONOREE.

Barbra Streisand will be the star of this year's Golden Globe Awards even though she hasn't appeared in a motion picture in 1999.

Streisand will be the recipient of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Cecil B. DeMille Award during the Jan. 23 Golden Globe ceremonies. The announcement was made Wednesday in Beverly Hills.

``I'm very grateful to the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association who have been so supportive of me throughout my career,'' Streisand said in a press release.

Streisand has received more Golden Globes than any other artist. She got them as top director for ``Yentl'' and as best actress for ``Funny Girl'' and ``A Star is Born.''

Past winners of the Cecil B. DeMille Award, presented for outstanding contributions to the entertainment field, include Jack Nicholson, Shirley MacLaine, Dustin Hoffman, Sean Connery, Sophia Loren and Robert Redford.

The 57th annual Golden Globe Awards will be broadcast as a three-hour NBC-TV special from the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Motion picture and television nominations will be announced Dec. 20.

Glover says prejudice rife in New York cab drivers

The African-American man stood on the corner, with his daughter by his side, trying to hail a cab. One passed by, then another, then another - five in all.

The man was actor Danny Glover and, with each passing cab, he got angrier and angrier.

On Wednesday, Glover met in New York with officials of the Taxi & Limousine Commission to propose better diversity training for drivers.

``The breaking point was to stand outside on 116th Street and have five cabs pass me up,'' Glover said at a news conference outside commission offices. ``I was so angry.''

Standing with his daughter, Mandisa, a senior at New York University, he added: ``The fact that my daughter's here to go to school - it really upsets me that if she's standing on the corner waiting to get a cab, she can't get a cab. . . . The fact that I'm a celebrity, the fact that I'm visible, allows me to draw attention to this.''

Glover's lawyer, Randolph Scott-McLaughlin, said they plan to meet with commission officials to offer help developing a new training video for cabbies and to discuss having new cabbies meet with African-Americans as part of the training.

The commission made no commitment in response to Glover's offer.

Clothier explores Geographic pages

Helmut Lang has become the first designer to take out a fashion ad in National Geographic. It features British model Stella Tennant in the November issue and put him back $170,000, quadruple what it would have cost in Vogue. Noted Lang's ad director, Jonny Lichtenstein: ``With National Geographic, the great thing about it is it's so not fashion,'' adding that there will be Lang ads in the magazine through 2000.

And Starbucks to warm him up?

Upon learning that the Al Gore campaign was paying feminist author Naomi Wolf $15,000 a month to consult with the candidate on speaking ``from the heart'' and dressing better, the Washington Post asked Christopher Buckley to suggest other consultants:

Buckley recommended Frank McCourt ($20,000 a month) to ``advise Gore on how to spin his childhood at the Fairfax Hotel into a tale of misery and destitution''; Reagan biographer Edmund Morris (same salary as McCourt) could ``advise on how to convince voters that he saved 78 people from drowning at the St. Albans school pool''; $50,000 a month to George Stephanopoulos for recommending ways to distance himself from ``one of our greatest presidents.''

Sills stopped short at Lincoln Center

The new sound system at Lincoln Center has Beverly Sills singing the blues.

Sills, a soprano and chairwoman of New York's Lincoln Center, said she attended a recent performance of the City Opera's ``Il Viaggio a Reims'' and could hear ``a buzz, a sound in the air which makes me know something is there.''

The women's voices, she said, were ``a little homogenous. There was a lack of contrast.''

``I'm not terrorized by this,'' Ms. Sills said. ``But I didn't enjoy it.''

The new system is made up of two dozen microphones around the stage and orchestra, and more than 100 speakers in the 2,700-seat theater's walls and under balconies. The system was installed over the summer.

Sills, the opera's former general director, said before the renovation that the theater's acoustics should be improved through structural changes rather than with microphones.

Powell urges pupils to fight for school

Colin Powell urged a group of high school freshmen to fight for their right to an education.

``No matter what else happens, you've got to finish high school,'' the retired Gulf War general told a group of 500 Tuesday at Pearl-Cohn Comprehensive High School in Nashville, Tenn. ``And beyond that, we expect you to go to college. Get all the education you can.''

Powell, now working with a youth group, spoke at a kickoff ceremony for Project GRAD, a program to inspire students to graduate from high school and go to college.

``If you don't finish high school, you're on your way to nowhere,'' Powell said.

Beverly Hills `Bash' slated for Flockhart

Calista Flockhart, who did a five-week, sold-out Off-Broadway run in ``Bash'' over the summer, will reprise the show at Beverly Hills' Canon Theatre with her New York co-stars Paul Rudd and Ron Eldard starting Nov. 27. The actress will appear in the three one-acts on weekends only through March 12.

News Lite is compiled by Karen Duffy from Daily News staff and wire reports

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo: (1) Actor Danny Glover and his daughter Mandisa talk to the press.

Associated Press

(2) Gore

(3) Streisand

(4) Powell