NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

Clooney and father arrested in protest

WASHINGTON

George Clooney and his father were arrested Friday during a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy, and the actor said he has asked President Barack Obama to engage China on stopping a humanitarian crisis in northern Africa.

The protesters accuse Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir of provoking a humanitarian crisis and blocking food and aid from entering the Nuba Mountains in the county’s border region with South Sudan.

Clooney, his father, Nick Clooney, and others were arrested after being warned three times not to cross a police line outside the embassy. Those taken into custody included NAACP President Ben Jealous, Martin Luther King III, actor and comedian Dick Gregory and Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia.

Nick Clooney visited Packard Music Hall in Warren, Ohio, on Wednesday to give a lecture about films that changed America.

Titanic museums to mark anniversary

NASHVILLE, Tenn.

Titanic museums in the Smoky Mountains and Branson, Mo., have told the ship’s story to 7 million visitors in the past six years. Now they are marking the Titanic centennial by sponsoring a Coast Guard cutter to take 1.5 million rose petals to the North Atlantic site where the ship sank.

The museums will have ceremonies April 14 in Tennessee and Missouri for the anniversary.

The flowers will be dropped at the site to memorialize the victims on the luxury liner, which sank April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg. More than 1,500 of the 2,200 on board died.