Names and faces
■ Media titan Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall, a model and actor, are getting divorced, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. Murdoch’s divorce, his fourth, is unlikely to alter the ownership structure of the businesses he holds stakes in, which include parent companies of Fox News and The Wall Street Journal. The family’s shares in the companies that Murdoch founded reside in a strictly managed trust. Murdoch splits voting rights over that trust with his four oldest children — Lachlan, Elisabeth, James and Prudence — and has arranged them so that he can never be outvoted. Still, the split could reverberate throughout his business empire, which maintains powerful sway in America and abroad through its right-leaning news brands including the Fox News Channel in the United States, The Sun in Britain and Sky News in Australia. During the early days of the marriage, aides and people close to the family said he was happily devoting more time to Hall, leaving room for his children — most importantly, his eventual chosen successor, Lachlan — to assert themselves at the top of the corporate hierarchy. Some people close to Murdoch were surprised to hear of his split from Hall. They wed in March 2016 at a centuries-old mansion in London. Murdoch marked the occasion by announcing on Twitter that he would stop posting on the platform, calling himself “the luckiest and happiest man in the world.” The October-December pairing — Hall is 65, Murdoch is 91 — made the couple the regular subject of rival tabloids, with paparazzi regularly catching the two smiling broadly on a pristine beach, in a wintry football stadium or at a black-tie opening. Hall was previously married to singer Mick Jagger, but the marriage was annulled in 1999.
■ A judge has ordered Academy Award-winning film writer/director Paul Haggis to remain under detention at his hotel in Italy while prosecutors continue investigating a woman’s allegations that he had sex with her over two days without her consent, Italian news reports said. After a hearing that lasted several hours Wednesday, Judge Vilma Gilli issued the ruling that extends Haggis’ detention at a farmhouse in the countryside of Ostuni, a tourist town where he was supposed to participate in an arts festival this week, the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported. The Ansa and LaPresse news agencies said Gilli had concluded that while the 69-year-old Haggis, who lives in the United States, isn’t a flight risk, there was the “danger” that evidence could be compromised or the alleged crime could be repeated. Haggis’ lawyer, Michele Laforgia, said his client had reiterated his total innocence and is in “hopeful expectation” that ultimately he will be vindicated.