newsmakers

newsmakers

Lady Gaga causes sensation at Harvard

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

Lady Gaga is causing quite a sensation on Harvard University’s campus.

The singer was at the school for Wednesday’s launch of her Born This Way Foundation with Oprah Winfrey and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

She says in an interview with The Associated Press that the foundation’s goal is to empower youth and inspire bravery. The foundation shares a name with her album, and she says its message will be for students to create a more loving environment at their schools and in the world.

About 100 students mobbed the singer as she arrived on campus in a sleek black dress, tall hat and platform shoes. She signed autographs and posed for photos.

Target pulls card that pokes fun at Houston

NEW YORK

Target is pulling a greeting card that makes fun of the late singer Whitney Houston’s penchant for bad boys.

The discounter said Wednesday the card was sold in its stores prior to Houston’s death Feb. 11, and as soon as it was brought to the retailer’s attention, Target Corp. began “the process of removing the card.”

The card reads: “Next time you think of dating the bad boy, consider Whitney Houston.”

The text refers to Houston’s rocky relationship with ex-husband and singer Bobby Brown. Brown has been blamed by some for Houston’s reported drug use.

“It is never our intent to offend guests with the products we offer, and we take feedback from guests very seriously,” said Target in a statement emailed to The Associated Press.

Houston, 48, was found dead hours before she was to attend a pre-Grammy Awards party. No cause of death has been determined.

Morgan Freeman closing restaurant

JACKSON, Miss.

Actor Morgan Freeman and his business partner are ending their 10-year run as owners of an upscale restaurant in the heart of the impoverished Mississippi Delta.

Freeman’s partner, attorney Bill Luckett, told The Associated Press that Madidi Restaurant in Clarksdale would have its closing party Wednesday night.

In separate statements, Luckett and Freeman said the restaurant had helped spur redevelopment in Clarkesdale.

Freeman said they have watched downtown Clarksdale take on a new life, and they “are proud to have been a part of that.”

Yet Luckett said the restaurant “has never made money,” and neither he nor Freeman has the time to run and manage it.

The restaurant offered what Luckett called “Americanized French” cuisine, a good wine list and fancy tablecloths and silverware.

Polish poet’s will calls for new foundation

WARSAW, Poland

The will of the late Nobel-winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska calls for the establishment of a new literary prize and a foundation that will guard her literary achievements.

Szymborska’s will was opened Wednesday in Krakow and its contents described by her personal secretary, Michal Rusinek, at a news conference.

Rusinek said the foundation will take over Szymborska’s books, archives and other objects. Szymborska did not clarify the nature of the literary award she wants established, so the foundation will also decide that.

Szymborska died Feb. 1 of lung cancer at age 88. One of Poland’s most acclaimed writers of recent decades, her humane and often ironic poems won a wider audience in 1996 when she won the Nobel prize for literature.

Associated Press