Palin’s contribution to Fox News ending
Sarah Palin is out as a Fox News Channel contributor. The network said Friday that it is parting ways with the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate.
A person familiar with discussions between Fox and Palin described the parting as amicable, saying that Fox and Palin had discussed renewing her contract but she decided to do other things. There was no immediate comment from the former Alaska governor.
Palin debuted as a Fox contributor in January 2010.
Turner seeks citizenship among Swiss
Tina Turner wants to become a Swiss citizen. The iconic diva has been living in Kuesnacht, a Zurich suburb, since 1995.
A Swiss paper wrote Friday that the 73-year-old had been granted citizenship. The Nutbush, Tenn.-born singer has passed a local civics test and interview.
“I’m very happy in Switzerland and I feel at home here. … I cannot imagine a better place to live,” Turner said in Blick, a German newspaper.
But the decision still needs to be approved by the Swiss state, or canton, of Zurich, and federal authorities before the red passport is awarded.
Turner first went to Switzerland with German record executive Erwin Bach, her longtime music manager, and has been living with him in a lake house called Chateau Algonquin, ABC News reports
Newtown horror inspires King’s ‘Guns’
Horror writer Stephen King is seeking to provoke a discussion on gun control and gun rights following the school shooting massacre in Newtown, Conn. The Maine native is a gun owner. He calls for three “reasonable measures” to curb gun violence in an essay titled “Guns,” released Friday as a Kindle single through Amazon.
King says he wants background checks on all gun sales and bans on high-capacity magazines and military-style weapons like the rifle used in the Newtown shooting, which killed 20 children and six school officials.
King describes a pattern of mass shootings in which anger and frustration give way to political rhetoric before discussions of gun control “disappear into the legislative swamp.” He says on his website: “If this helps provoke constructive debate, I’ve done my job.”
The birthday bunch
Actress Anne Jeffreys is 90. Cartoonist Jules Feiffer is 84. Sportscaster-actor Bob Uecker is 78. Actor Scott Glenn is 74. Actor David Strathairn is 64. Alt-country singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is 60. Rock singer-musician Eddie Van Halen is 58. Actress-comedian-talk show host Ellen DeGeneres is 55. Musician Andrew Ridgeley is 50. Gospel singer Kirk Franklin is 43. Actress Sara Rue is 35.