Reuters People News Summary
Following is a summary of current people news briefs.
New York jurors shown naked photos of Harvey Weinstein
Jurors in Harvey Weinstein's New York rape trial were shown naked photographs of the former Hollywood producer on Tuesday over his lawyers' objections. A sketch artist hired by Reuters saw a couple of the naked photos when they were passed to the jury and produced a drawing for the news agency. In the courtroom, prosecutors did not say why the photographs were introduced or how many were presented.
Kirk Douglas, Hollywood's tough guy on screen and off, dead at 103
Kirk Douglas, the cleft-chinned movie star who fought gladiators, cowboys and boxers on the screen and the Hollywood establishment, died on Wednesday at the age of 103, his son Michael Douglas said. “It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103,” Michael Douglas said in a statement to People magazine and on his Facebook page.
U.S. Senator Feinstein, citing Kobe Bryant crash, calls for helicopter warning systems
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein on Wednesday urged the Federal Aviation Administration to require terrain warning systems in commercial helicopters, technology that investigators say was not in use in the crash that killed basketball star Kobe Bryant and eight others last month. Bryant, 41, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other people died when a twin-engine Sikorsky S-76B helicopter slammed into a hillside outside Los Angeles in heavy fog on January 26.
Justin Bieber on drug abuse: 'It was legit crazy scary'
Teen heartthrob Justin Bieber has opened up about his past heavy drug abuse, calling it an escape from the pressures of fame that he decided to stop only when he felt he was dying. Bieber, 25, has written on social media in the past year about his struggles with depression, drugs and fame, but he went into detail on camera for the first time in a documentary series about his life.
Singer Katy Perry named Asian charity ambassador by UK's Prince Charles
Britain's Prince Charles will announce on Tuesday that U.S. pop singer Katy Perry will become an ambassador for the British Asian Trust to help its fight against child-trafficking, the charity said. Perry, 35, who is already a goodwill ambassador for United Nations children’s organization UNICEF, met the British heir-to-throne at a meeting of the Trust's supporters and advisers in Mumbai last November while he was on a visit to India.
Barbadian poet Kamau, who exalted Caribbean's Afro roots, dies
Internationally acclaimed Barbadian poet, essayist and historian Edward Kamau Brathwaite, whose prolific writings sought to assert the identity of Caribbean peoples and their African roots, died at his home in Barbados on Tuesday. He was 89.Born Lawson Edward Brathwaite in 1930 in the Barbadian capital Bridgetown when the nation was still under British colonial rule, he later adopted the Kenyan name Kamau, by which he was often simply known.A jazz lover, Brathwaite was known for writing in and exalting the English spoken in the Caribbean with its African rhythms and timbre which he coined "nation language," considering the term "dialect" pejorative.Among his most celebrated works are the poetry volumes "The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy," "Ancestors," "Born to Slow Horses," and "Elegguas," as well as scholarly books like "History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry."Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley praised Brathwaite as "easily one of the titans of post-colonial literature and the arts" in a statement to the press on Tuesday."His chronicling of our past through his magnificent works shone a powerful light on the realities of our present and, in turn, guided our sense of self and national identity."Educated at the British universities Cambridge and Sussex, he spent the early years of his career working as an education officer on the British colony of the Gold Coast, staying after it became independent as Ghana."Brathwaite familiarized himself with Ghanaian traditional verse and pre-colonial African myths, which would be influential to his own writing," according to the jury of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which he won in 1994, edging out other finalists including Nobel laureates Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney and Svetlana Alexievich.He later returned to the Caribbean, working in Jamaica and Barbados, eventually taking up the position in 1992 of professor of comparative literature at New York University.Brathwaite was the recipient of numerous international awards during his life, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the gold Musgrave Medal for Literature from the Institute of Jamaica, and Cuba's Casa de las Americas Prize.Many critics, however, felt he was robbed of the Nobel Prize in Literature, given his rich and singular contribution to Caribbean writing.
Emergency 911 phone calls on Kobe Bryant crash show witnesses concerned about fog
Recently released emergency 911 phone calls about the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant showed witnesses were concerned about the poor visibility due to fog and revive the tragic moment that rocked the basketball and entertainment worlds nine days ago. The twin-engine Sikorsky S-76B slammed into a hillside and killed all nine people on board in an accident that still has many of the basketball great's fans grieving, with more public memorials to come.
