Names and faces
■ U.S. Ambassador Cindy McCain has been appointed to head the U.N. World Food Program, the world’s largest humanitarian organization, which aims to help millions of people confronting conflicts, disasters and the effects of climate change. Last week’s appointment of McCain, the widow of Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain, was announced by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Qu Dongyu. McCain has been the U.S. envoy to the Rome-based food program and the Food and Agriculture Organization since November 2021, and the chiefs called her “a champion for human rights” with “a long history of giving a voice to the voiceless.” The president of the food program’s board, Polish Ambassador Andrej Pollok, welcomed McCain’s selection, saying she takes over “at a moment when the world confronts the most serious food security crisis in modern history.” An advocate for children, McCain has served on the board of directors for Operation Smile, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing facial deformities of children around the world, visiting India, Morocco and Vietnam. She also founded the American Voluntary Medical Team, which provides emergency medical and surgical care to impoverished children around the world. And she has traveled extensively in a personal capacity on behalf of the World Food Program, visiting mother and child feeding programs in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
■ The former star of the St. Louis-based television reality show “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s” was sentenced to life in prison for arranging the shooting death of his nephew to collect a $450,000 life insurance payment. James “Tim” Norman did not speak on his own behalf at last week’s sentencing hearing in the 2016 killing of his 21-year-old nephew, Andre Montgomery Jr. Both men had starred in the long-running OWN reality show about the family’s soul food business in the St. Louis area. Norman’s attorneys submitted several letters from family and friends asking for leniency, including from Norman’s mother and founder of the Sweetie Pie’s restaurants, Robbie Montgomery. “I don’t know whether Tim did what he was accused and convicted of,” wrote Robbie Montgomery, who is also the victim’s grandmother. “He is still the baby that I bore, and I love him as every mother involved loves their child.” Several of Andre Montgomery’s family members, including his mother, Michell Griggs, asked that Norman be sentenced to life. U.S. District Judge John Ross gave him two life sentences, calling it “a cold-blooded, incredibly premeditated, planned execution of your nephew.”