NEWS LITE : MEMORIAL CONCERT TO HONOR MENUHIN.

A memorial concert for the late Yehudi Menuhin will be held at London's Royal Albert Hall on the 70th anniversary of his debut performance there.

The violinist, who died in March at 82, had planned to perform at the hall on the Nov. 6 anniversary.

The memorial concert will include Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which Menuhin had planned to play. It will be conducted by his friend Mstislav Rostropovich and feature a quartet of his favorite singers - Teresa Seidl, Liliana Bizineche, Algis Janutas and Benno Schollom.

Proceeds from the concert will go to the Menuhin Memorial Trust.

McCartney open to new romance

Sir Paul McCartney says that he's not looking for another woman, more than a year after the death of his wife, Linda, but that he's open to the possibility of a new relationship.

``It might happen. I don't know, you know, I'm not really working at it. I just take things as they come,'' McCartney said in an interview broadcast Monday by Independent Television News.

``I think Linda would want me to be happy,'' he said. ``We'll just see what happens, really.''

Linda McCartney died of cancer in April 1998. She had married the former Beatle in 1969.

McCartney said he decided not to throw himself into his music immediately after her death. ``I just did what came naturally, and that involved a lot of crying, basically, and a lot of letting it out, wherever I was, sometimes a bit embarrassing,'' he said.

``It was a question of how long did she want me to grieve. Because she was such an upbeat lady, I think she would have said, come on, get on with it now.''

McCartney recently released a new album, ``Run Devil Run.''

`The Story of Us' a story seen before

Did ``The Story of Us'' seem a little . . . familiar? Redundant, even? According to director Rob Reiner, that's not an accident. ``Look at the couples in all of my movies,'' he tells the Baltimore Sun. ``Except for perhaps `The American President,' but certainly the ones that are focused mostly on the male-female thing, like `The Sure Thing,' `When Harry Met Sally' . . . and even to an extent `A Few Good Men' - it's always the same guy and the same girl. Basically, they're all the same. The woman is always much more organized and buttoned-down and together. And the man is pretty much coloring outside the lines. . . . `The Story of Us' is just those characters with a little bit more life experience.''

One life experience Reiner would like to put behind him: ``No matter what I accomplish, no matter what I do in life, I could win the Nobel Prize, the headline will say, Meathead wins Nobel,'' Reiner laments.

Jimmy Page wins leafy court fight

A decorated former military pilot met his match when he faced off in a Windsor, England, court against a neighbor, rock guitarist Jimmy Page.

Dudley Burnside, who's retired and lives on a $26,500 military pension, said he might have to sell his home to pay Page more than $40,000 in legal expenses as ordered by a judge last week.

Page, 54, a founding member of Led Zeppelin, had refused to remove some trees that Burnside claimed blocked out the light and caused cracks in cement on his property, The Independent reported Monday. The trees have grown 33 feet high.

A court dismissed the former World War II and Korean War pilot's claim against Page and ordered him to pay Page's legal fees.

``I served in bomber command, whose 55,000 casualties are a reminder to the postwar generation, of which Mr. Page belongs, of the cost of the liberties they now enjoy,'' Burnside told The Independent. ``I would have hoped he would have thought of that for a moment before he refused our legitimate request to remove his trees.''

Someone who answered the intercom outside Page's gated property said: ``The Burnsides lost the case, and there is obviously good reason for that.''

Novelist Smiley praises Barbie

Novelist Jane Smiley (``A Thousand Acres,'' ``Duplicate Keys''), who says she doesn't wear makeup and doesn't have ``any gowns, bikinis, pink high heels, floral accessories or feminine furniture,'' is a Barbie-doll believer. Smiley's two daughters were big Barbie fans, she writes in a ``Barbie Chronicles'' essay reprinted in Ladies' Home Journal.

``If my daughters were to learn certain Hollywood-inspired essentials of American womanhood, it wasn't going to be from me, but from Barbie.'' Barbie is every girl's traditional heroine, claims Smiley: Nancy Drew, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Beauty of ``Beauty and the Beast.'' All TV and movie blondes are Barbies, as is the prettiest girl in school. ``A girl has to have a Barbie doll in order to decide whether she herself wants to be a Barbie.''

Barbie represents instant gratification, and every Barbie is sooner or later discarded, writes Smiley. Barbie isn't cuddly; she's built to be toyed with, manipulated. ``All this aids in a girl's making up her mind about who she is and what she wants. That Barbie is a genius.''

Queen takes up where princess left off

Jordan's Queen Noor visited a rehabilitation center for land-mine victims Monday, praising its strategy of hiring them to build prosthetics.

``It's a place of smiles,'' she said of the Kien Khleng Rehabilitation Center on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. ``We could see hope and great faith in the future that people have there because of the care that they are receiving.''

Noor, the widow of King Hussein, is on a three-day tour of mine-strewn Cambodia, carrying the torch for a favorite cause of Princess Diana, who was killed in a 1997 car accident.

The U.S.-born Noor shies away from comparisons between herself and the late Princess of Wales.

``I see myself as one of many in the world, just as you find in Cambodia, who are committed to the eradication of anti-personnel land mines,'' she said.

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

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo: (1) WALKIN' THE DOG

Dawn Everett of Port Angeles, Wash., is the first to admit that she spoils her dog, as she pushes it down the street in a baby stroller Sunday.

Associated Press

(2) Queen Noor comforts a Khmer girl who lost her legs in a land-mine accident.

(3) McCartney