Tattle: Paul Newman battleing cancer, pal says

AS HAS LONG BEEN speculated, 83-year-old  Paul Newman  is battling cancer, his longtime neighbor and business partner,  A.E. Hotchner  said yesterday.

Hotchner, who partnered with Newman to start Newman's Own salad dressing company in the 1980s, said that Newman told him about the disease about 18 months ago.

"It's a form of cancer and he's dealing with it," Hotchner told the Associated Press.

Newman appeared to have lost weight during practice for the Indianapolis 500 auto race last month.  Martha Stewart , in an entry dated June 6, posted a photo on her blog of herself with the actor, who looked thin, at a luncheon for his Hole in the Wall Gang camps. (The Hole in the Wall Gang was led by Newman's affable outlaw character, Butch, in the 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance ...