NEWS LITE : BROKAW GETS DEFENSIVE ON `60 MINUTES'.

NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw will take the unusual step of appearing on a rival network Sunday when he goes on CBS' ``60 Minutes'' to defend his reporting of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.

Brokaw will respond to charges by Richard Jewell, who has been identified as a suspect in the bombing, that the anchor acted as a ``prosecutor'' in his reporting of the investigation. Jewell appears in a ``60 Minutes'' report on the bombing to be aired Sunday.

According to a partial transcript of Sunday's program released by CBS, Jewell accuses Brokaw of insinuating that he is guilty. Jewell has not been charged in the July 27 bombing, which killed two people and injured 111 others.

``Tom Brokaw has apparently . . . elevated himself from the position of nightly news anchor to being a prosecutor,'' Jewell told correspondent Mike Wallace. ``I picked up on when he turned and said, `Look, they probably got enough to arrest him. They probably have got enough to try him.' ''

According to CBS, Brokaw told Wallace on Friday: ``My job is to report what we were able to find (out) about what was a crisis in Atlanta. They were focusing their investigation on this one man.

``I pointed out that this had been the speculation and finished . . . by saying: Everyone, please understand absolutely he is only the focus of this investigation - he is not even a suspect yet.''

Turning tables in musical suit

Back in 1990, an obscure guy named Ray Repp heard the title song from Andrew Lloyd Webber's ``The Phantom at the Opera'' and thought it sounded very much like a song he'd written, ``Till You.'' He sued the celebrated British composer, charging that he'd stolen the music. He lost. Now Lloyd Webber has countersued. He charges that Repp's 1978 song, ``Till You,'' sounds very much like ``Close Every Door,'' written in 1969 for Lloyd Webber's musical ``Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.''

Lloyd Webber is worth an estimated $860 million. Repp is a clerk in a men's clothing store. He said he earned less than $10,000 last year. Since it was published, ``Till You'' has earned him the grand total of $78.09.

Lloyd Webber, when asked in Manhattan Federal Court whether the song had caused him ``irreparable damage,'' said, ``Yes.''

Limo ride relives horrible day

For $25, you too can sit in the back of an open-top limousine making its way through Dealey Plaza, hear the crack of rifle fire as you glide past the Texas School Book Depository and feel the car speed up as it roars through the underpass toward Parkland Memorial Hospital.

It's one of Dallas' newest tourist attractions built around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and some say it's sick and exploitive. But that's not stopping visitors from taking the one-hour trip.

``All my daughter had to do was tell me about it on the phone and I said, `Sign me up,' '' said Janice Ritting, 55, of Tacoma, Wash.

The tour, thought up by Paul Crute, retraces the path of the presidential motorcade in a 1964 Lincoln restored to look like the 1963 model. Crute re-creates the moment with piped-in sound effects and radio broadcasts from the day the president was shot.

Crute, 34, gave up a career in sales to start the tour after seeing tourists wandering the assassination site. He makes maybe three trips on weekdays and eight a day during the weekend.

``Being in touch with the fact that it is such an unhealed wound, that's kind of what motivated me to dream this up,'' he said.

``It's sick,'' said Chuck DiDiovanni, a tourist from Chicago. ``Let's not relive it again. It was a terrible time.''

Crute said no one who has taken the tour found it offensive. ``I view it as history and there's nothing tasteless or tacky about history,'' he said.

Robbery makes banker feel secure

Bank robberies usually don't make bankers happy. But when a small branch of a troubled bank was held up Thursday, the bank's head considered it a good sign.

At least the bank robber was confident he'd find money there, said Jiri Klumpar, who was named temporary head of Agrobanka, the largest private bank in Czech Republic.

A man armed with a gun robbed the bank in Kardasova Recice, some 80 miles south of Prague. The robber fled with 200,000 Czech crowns, worth about $8,000.

The theft occurred two days after Klumpar was assigned to oversee Agrobanka and ensure it stays afloat.

The bank doesn't really like losing money to a robber, Klumpar said.

``But on the other hand, it shows that the thief was confident that money is there - which proved to be a good presumption,'' he said.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Andrew Lloyd Webber: Suing over song

(2) Paul Crute knows people think his JFK Presidential Limo Tours is a sick idea, but he considers his re-creation of Kennedy's assassination of historical value.

Associated Press