Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ The life of renowned physicist and author Stephen Hawking was celebrated Saturday in English city of Cambridge, with hundreds of people lining the streets for a glimpse of the hearse carrying his remains to a private funeral. There was a burst of applause outside St. Mary the
Great church when the hearse arrived.
The bells of the church tolled 76 times, one for each year of Hawking’s life. Hawking was remembered as a brave man who triumphed over motor neuron disease by continuing his research into space and time even after paralysis set in and his muscles failed. About 500 invited guests attended the funeral for Hawking, who died March 14. Hawking’s family members released a statement saying they chose to hold the funeral “in the city that he loved so much and which loved him.” Flags were lowered to half-staff in many parts of Cambridge to pay tribute to Hawking. The service was officiated by the Rev. Cally Hammond, dean of Cambridge University’s Gonville and Caius College, where Hawking was a fellow for 52 years. Hawking will be cremated at a later date and his ashes are to be interred at London’s Westminster Abbey near the remains of famed physicist Isaac Newton.
■ Fox News host Laura Ingraham announced Friday that she was taking a week off after the decision of several companies to pull advertising from her show after she ridiculed a student survivor of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. “I’ll be off next week for Easter break with my kids. But fear not, we’ve got a great lineup of guest hosts to fill in for me,” Ingraham said on her show, The Ingraham Angle. In response to an email, Fox News said Ingraham’s break was a “preplanned vacation with her kids.” The dispute began Wednesday, when Ingraham shared an article about how the student, David Hogg, 17, had been rejected from several colleges, and she accused him of whining about it. In response, Hogg, who has called for stricter gun regulations after the Feb. 14 shooting, called on advertisers to boycott Ingraham’s show. He posted the names of her top advertisers on Twitter and urged his nearly 700,000 followers to call those companies. Several companies, including Hulu, Nutrish, Nestle and TripAdvisor, have yanked their advertisements from Ingraham’s show. On Thursday, Ingraham apologized to Hogg, saying he should be proud of his grade-point average. But Hogg said Ingraham’s apology did not go far enough and seemed designed only to stop more advertisers from dropping her show. “I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight,” Hogg said on Twitter. “It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children.”