Names and faces

LITTLE ROCK — Dancing with the Stars co-host Brooke Burke has thyroid cancer. Burke posted a video message Thursday on YouTube disclosingher condition and her plans for surgery to remove her thyroid. The 41-year-old mother of four said a lump on herthyroid was found during a routine biopsy. She said in the video that the surgery has been scheduled, but she doesn’t specify when. She said it will leave “a nice big scar right here,” tracing a line across her throat. Although initially shocked by the diagnosis, Burke said, she now feels strong and confident and that her doctors are optimistic. She vowed to make “a positive out of this negative thing.” Found in the front of the neck, the thyroid secretes several hormones that influence metabolism, growth and development.

Hundreds of photographs of Marilyn Monroe and other celebrities, including famous ones of Monroe in bed and as a ballerina, were being sold Thursday evening at an auction house in Poland. Bidders and spectators packed the Desa Unicum house in Warsaw, where 238 pictures by the late American fashion and celebrity photographer Milton H. Greene were up for sale. Most of these pictures of Monroe were taken from 1953-57 when Greene was her adviser and business partner. He made many of the prints during Monroe’s lifetime, and they are highly valued by collectors. As the bidding began, a black-and-white photo of a reclining Monroe in black stockings sold for $16,000, and another of her in a ballerina’s dress sold for almost $20,000. Apicture of her in bed sold for $13,000. The auction also offered Greene’s pictures of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Liza Minnelli. Other stars in the vast portrait collection, which was estimated at $680,000, included Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Paul Newman, Alfred Hitchcock and Marlon Brando. The photos come from a collection of some 4,000 Greene pictures that Poland obtained from Chicago businessman Dino Matingas in the mid-1990s as the result of a complex communist-era embezzlement scandal linked to the buyout of Poland’s state debt. Proceeds from the auction will go to the Polish government. Some ofthe images have never been published before, according to Marta Maciazek, the Polish official in charge of cleaning up the mess from the corruption affair.