Christy Turlington, the 31-year-old supermodel who currently appears on anti-smoking commercials, has been diagnosed with emphysema, The Associated Press reports. The model told reporters that she was diagnosed after undergoing a lung scan in New York.
She said she smoked up to a pack a day from ages 13 to 26. She later became an anti-smoking activist after her father’s death from lung cancer in 1997.
DOUGLAS, ZETA-JONES SPEAK: The happy newlyweds have finally spoken. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones sat with reporters Sunday to explain the details of their wedding two weeks ago, Reuters reports. So why was only one photographer allowed into the ceremony, which reportedly cost $1.5 million to $2 million?
Douglas says it was “the best way to control the media blitz.”
The couple has been secluded in their Manhattan digs with their 4-month-old son Dylan since they exchanged vows Nov. 18 at New York’s Plaza Hotel.
Zeta-Jones, however, could not confirm the exact cost of the wedding, saying that Douglas had not told her how much was actually spent. She also said she hadn’t received the bill for her reported $250,000 Christian Lacroix gown, so she didn’t know the cost of the dress, either.
POET GWENDOLYN BROOKS DIES: Gwendolyn Brooks, the Chicago poet who became the first black person to win a Pulitzer Prize, died Sunday, Reuters reports. She was 83.
Considered one of the most influential poets of her time, Brooks published “A Street in Bronzeville,” her first of 20 books, in 1945. Five years later she won a Pulitzer Prizer for her poem “Annie Allen.”
“At a time when racism was so rampant, Gwendolyn Brooks was almost like a literary Joe Louis,” Sterling Plumpp, a professor in the departments of African-American Studies and English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune. “At a time when black people were being clubbed into submission because of their race, it was her eloquence in her poetry that got many African-Americans to look at their community, and to see their minds as something of great worth,” he added.
Brooks died in her home in south Chicago surrounded by friends and family. She is survived by a son, Henry Blakely III; and one grandson. Services are pending.
