NEWS LITE : CAREY'S OLD HOME REDUCED TO ASHES.

Mariah Carey's former dream house, an eye-popping mansion in Bedford, N.Y., that sold for $20.5 million after her divorce from Sony Music executive Tommy Mottola, burned to the ground over the weekend.

The home was vacant and there were no injuries in the blaze Saturday.

The home had nine bedrooms, seven fireplaces, two swimming pools and a recording studio on 56 acres. The house was designed and built for the singer and the music mogul in the mid-1990s.

Shortly after they divorced in 1998, it was bought by Nelson Peltz, the chairman of Triarc Cos., which runs Arby's, Royal Crown Cola and Snapple.

Peltz's lawyer, Neale Albert, said firefighters told Peltz the fire was probably caused by faulty wiring.

Spears will lead Mardi Gras parade

Louisiana's own Britney Spears will join the Mardi Gras royalty in March when she serves as grand marshal of the Endymion parade.

The Endymion club always has one of the season's biggest and gaudiest parades - 28 floats, 42 marching bands and 5,000 participants last year - with a celebrity as grand marshal.

The teen pop star is from Kentwood. Also riding in the parade March 4 will be '70s pop stars Hall and Oates, New Orleans' own Neville Brothers, swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the band The Naked Martinis.

Last year's grand marshal was chef Emeril Lagasse.

Dangerous landing for Goo Goo Dolls

A U.S. Navy plane flying the rock group Goo Goo Dolls back from a Christmas tour of American military bases skidded off the runway while landing during a rainstorm in Sicily. No one was injured.

The C-9 aircraft was bringing the group back from Tuzla, Bosnia, the last stop of a holiday tour of bases in Europe.

The group's publicity company said in a statement that the plane attempted two landing approaches Sunday night before touching down.

``The shows were great,'' base spokesman Lt. Cappy Surette said from Sicily. ``They really boosted the morale of our men and women, especially during the holidays.''

Reports on divorce at issue in court

New York State's highest court says the details of singer Melba Moore's divorce were a matter of ``legitimate public concern'' in New York.

The decision, announced Monday, means that Moore's ex-husband, Charles Huggins, must show that the New York Daily News' reporting of the breakup was ``grossly irresponsible'' instead of simply being negligent. Gross irresponsibility is considered far harder to prove.

In 1994, the Daily News ran three items in which Moore accused Huggins of mismanaging the couple's money, of being abusive toward her and of failing to support the couple's daughter. Huggins sued for $90 million, contending that his management business and reputation were damaged.

The case returns to a trial court.

Christmas with the Clintons

Schoolchildren waiting for President Clinton to read them a holiday story were starting to fidget. They watched a reindeer with a blinking red nose prance around with Frosty the Snowman. Still no Clinton.

They children, mostly from schools in Washington, listened to a concert of carols. Santa Claus conducted a weak rendition of ``Jingle Bells.'' The Army Chorale serenaded with ``God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.''

Clinton was a half-hour late. Shortly after 2 p.m., the president and first lady joined the children in the East Room of the White House.

Seated on a red bench with children at his feet, Clinton cracked open a storybook of Clement C. Moore's 1822 poem about a father's Christmas Eve encounter with St. Nicholas.

Clinton read the story aloud, stopping at familiar words to let the children chime in. Hillary Rodham Clinton sat next to the president and held a corner of the book, which they held up to let the children see the pictures.

Five minutes later, story time was over.

``It was fast, wasn't it?'' Clinton said.

Although subdued by the story and carols, the children, mostly ages 5 to 9, clapped and rocked when the SMASH Singers, a 20-member choir of first-through sixth grade, from Santa Monica Alternative School House in California sang their version of ``The 12 Days of Christmas.''

Dazzled by the choir, a beaming Clinton turned to the first lady and whispered: ``That was amazing.''

Grass of the future: high-tech, low-mow

Don't throw away the lawnmower yet, but scientists have found out a way to stunt the growth of grass and other plants and keep them greener longer by tinkering with a single gene. It could be a dream come true for suburbanites weary of the weekly mowing ritual.

The gene regulates production of a steroid hormone that causes plants to grow, much the same way similar steroids work in animals. Scientists have now succeeded in manipulating the gene to create dwarf versions of standard plant species, according to research published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Conventional varieties of grass take an average of 13 years to develop, and the latest breeds have reduced the number of mowings by only one or two times a year, he said.

A tobacco plant that would normally grow 6 feet tall was engineered to mature at 12 inches by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego.

``It very much parallels the steroids in football players. Plants buff up on it,'' Joanne Chory, the Salk study's senior researcher, said of the newly manipulated plant gene. ``If you do something ... so it isn't expressed, you get these little dwarfy guys.''

The dwarf versions are identical to the standard plants in every way but size, she said.

Plant breeders have long searched for ways to slow the growth of grass to reduce maintenance on golf courses, as well as lawns and parks. But conventional breeding by cross-pollinating different varieties is far more time consuming and less exacting than engineering specific genes.

The plants the Salk Institute scientists used in their study are more similar to trees, so there may be difficulties in getting the technology to work with grass, said Andy Hamblin, a turf geneticist at the University of Illinois. But it's only a matter of time before scientists develop grass that only needs to be mowed once or twice a year, he said.

News Lite is compiled from Daily News staff and wire reports.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton read ``Twas the Night Before Christmas'' to 5-year-old Tiara Rasheed and 50 other schoolchildren Monday at the White House.

(2) CAREY