Following is a summary of current people news briefs.
Murdochs face tough week over scandal
LONDON (Reuters) – Rupert Murdoch’s tetchy and
uncompromising appearance at a British inquiry into phone
hacking could come back to haunt him this week when politicians
give their verdict on the scandal at his defunct News of the
World newspaper. Three days of grilling at the Leveson judicial
press inquiry last week extracted few new facts from Rupert and
his son James as the 81-year-old casually threw out insults at
politicians and described himself as a victim of a corporate
cover-up.
Johnson biographer Caro says political genius is his
subject
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Robert Caro has spent almost 40
years writing his monumental prize-winning biography of
President Lyndon Johnson, but says it is not the 1960s leader
that held his fascination for so long, but how political power
works in America. With the long-awaited fourth volume of his
Johnson biography ”The Passage of Power” due out on Tuesday,
Caro said he never wanted to write just about the life of the
president who rammed through civil rights and welfare laws that
transformed the nation but then was destroyed by the Vietnam
War.
Artist Lucian Freud leaves $156 million in will: paper
LONDON (Reuters) – Portrait painter Lucian Freud left a
record 96 million pounds ($156 million) in his will, the
largest sum bequeathed by a British artist, the Mail on Sunday
newspaper reported. Freud died in July last year aged 88, by
which time his uncompromising, fleshy portraits had made him
one of the world’s most revered and coveted artists, whose
subjects ranged from England’s Queen Elizabeth II to the
supermodel Kate Moss.
