In brief: Obama names envoy to Muslims

Washington – President Barack Obama on Saturday named White House lawyer Rashad Hussain a special envoy to the Muslim world.

Hussain is the second special envoy named to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The group, with more than 50 member-states, is the world’s second-largest intergovernmental body after the U.N. (The first envoy, Sada Cumber, was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2008.)

Hussain had been a deputy associate White House counsel since the start of the administration.

Designer suing CNN anchor

New York – An interior designer is suing CNN anchor Anderson Cooper after she took an unusual fall at an old New York City firehouse that he is converting into a new home.

Killian O’Brien, of Brooklyn, says in her suit that she plunged 17 feet through the hole that once held the station’s fire pole.

Cooper’s spokesman declined to comment.

Gates donates famous handcuffs

New York – Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. says he’s donated the handcuffs used on him during his arrest last year outside his home to the Smithsonian Institution’s black history museum.

Gates says in today’s edition of the New York Times Magazine that he donated the handcuffs to the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Gates’ arrest last July by police investigating a report of a possible break-in at his home near Harvard University sparked a national debate over racial profiling.

The charge against Gates was dropped, and the Harvard scholar later reconciled with the police sergeant who arrested him outside his Cambridge home.