DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Newseum to display Tim Russert's office
WASHINGTON — Longtime "Meet the Press" moderator Tim Russert's office, complete with Buffalo Bills pennants and a journalist's clutter, will go on display next month at the Newseum.
The office will be reassembled to look as it did June 13, 2008, the day Russert died of a heart attack at age 58 while recording voiceovers for his next show at NBC's Washington bureau. The exhibit at the journalism museum opens Nov. 20 and will remain through 2010.
"After Tim's death, it became very clear to us that Tim really hit a nerve with a wider swath of people than you would ordinarily think for a journalist," Charles Overby, the Newseum's chief executive, said Wednesday.
Russert, who served on the Newseum's board of directors, was bureau chief for NBC News in Washington and began hosting "Meet the Press" in 1991.
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NEW YORK
Photographer Penn dies at age 92
NEW YORK — Irving Penn, whose photographs revealed a taste for stark simplicity whether he was shooting celebrity portraits, fashion, still life or remote places of the world, died Wednesday at his Manhattan home. He was 92.
The death was announced by his photo assistant, Roger Krueger.
"He never stopped working," said Peter MacGill, a longtime friend whose Pace-MacGill Galleries in Manhattan represented Penn's work. "He would go back to similar subjects and never see them the same way twice."
Penn, who constantly explored the photographic medium and its boundaries, typically preferred to isolate his subjects — from fashion models to Aborigine tribesmen — from their natural settings to photograph them in a studio against a stark background. He believed the studio could most closely capture their true natures.
CALIFORNIA
Filmmaker sues in bid to block 'Good Hair'
LOS ANGELES — A filmmaker is suing Chris Rock for at least $5 million and trying to block the release of his upcoming documentary "Good Hair."
Regina Kimbell sued Rock and several film companies in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday, claiming Rock's project is a copycat of her film, "My Nappy Roots."
Kimbell states she screened her film for the comedian in 2007. The lawsuit states "My Nappy Roots" traces the business and cultural history of black hair care and has otherwise only been shown at colleges and film festivals since its completion in 2006.
Her lawsuit claims several of elements of her film have been copied.
"Good Hair" will be released in certain cities today and nationwide on Oct. 23.
FLORIDA
Starlet Smith tied by FBI to murder plot
MIAMI — The FBI investigated whether Anna Nicole Smith plotted to kill her tycoon husband's son as they battled for his father's fortune, newly released files show, but the former Playboy Playmate who died in 2007 was never prosecuted.
Smith's FBI records, obtained exclusively by The Associated Press, say the agency investigated Smith in 2000 and 2001 in a murder-for-hire plot targeting E. Pierce Marshall, who was at the center of a long legal fight to keep the starlet, model and one-time stripper from collecting his father's oil wealth. The younger Marshall died three years ago of natural causes.
The Associated Press
