Names and faces
Russian President Vladimir Putin, renowned for macho stunts that often involve taking his shirt off, is feeling under the weather.
“The president has a cold,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday, adding that Putin, whose voice appeared hoarse at meetings a day earlier, would limit his public appearances while continuing to work. “It’s winter.” Putin, 65, is all but certain to win a fourth term in presidential elections next month to extend his rule to 2024. State television showed him plunging into the icy waters of a lake in freezing weather in January as part of Russian Orthodox Epiphany traditions. After the White House released details of U.S. President Donald Trump’s health check last month, Peskov ruled out publishing medical reports on Putin, whom he described as “absolutely healthy.”
Omarosa Manigault Newman, the three-time Apprentice contestant and fired White
House staff member, told fellow contestants on her current reality television show that there’s more reason to fear having Vice President Mike Pence in the Oval Office than Donald Trump. “Everybody who’s wishing for impeachment might want to reconsider,” she told fellow cast members on the latest episode of CBS’ Celebrity Big Brother, which aired Monday night. “We would be begging for days of Trump back if Pence became president.” In an episode last week, Manigault Newman, who had been director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, warned fellow contestants that the Trump administration is “so bad” and said she was “serving my country, not serving him.” On the campaign trail, Pence often quipped that he was “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican — in that order.” While billionaire Tom Steyer and his NextGen Climate Action organization have used TV and cable ads to call for Trump’s impeachment, the Republican-led Congress shows no sign of taking up that cause. Pence “is extreme. I’m Christian, I love Jesus, but he thinks Jesus tells him to say things. I’m like, ‘Jesus ain’t say that.’” Manigault Newman said. “It’s scary.”
Singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is working on a memoir about her life from her childhood in the South to how she became a late bloomer success in the music industry. Henry Holt and Company says Sunday that the untitled book is scheduled to hit shelves in 2020. Williams says she has a lot to say and a big story to tell. In a statement, she said she wants people to know what’s behind the songs. Williams won her first Grammy in 1994 at age 46 for writing the song “Passionate Kisses.” She went on to win two more for the contemporary folk album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and for best female rock vocal performance for “Get Right with God.”