Barry Manilow donates violins to grade schools
EVERETT, Wash. (AP) - Forty-five elementary school students will learn to play the violin thanks to Barry Manilow.
He donated the violins through his Manilow Music Project to students at Hawthorne Elementary in Everett and Tulalip Elementary on the Tulalip Reservation in Washington state.
The $36,000 donation last week means the Everett School District will have a strings program for the first time in 25 years and the tribal school will have its first strings program ever.
The Everett Herald reports Everett symphony Orchestra assistant conductor Ron Friesen is volunteering to teach students at both schools twice a week.
Manilow decided to donate the violins following a March concert in Everett.
Morgan Freeman helps friend in Miss. gov's race
CLARKSDALE, Miss. (AP) - Academy-Award winner Morgan Freeman says Mississippi is "starving" for the right leadership, so the actor is using his celebrity status to help his friend run for governor in 2011.
Freeman has written a fundraising letter and is one of the hosts for a cocktail party in Los Angeles next week for Bill Luckett, an attorney seeking the Democratic nomination. Term limits prevent Republican Gov. Haley Barbour from seeking a third term.
"Reform in Mississippi is hard because the base stock of this state is a mule-headed bunch of farmers," Freeman told The Associated Press on Sunday. "Those farmers have ruled the roost for so long because this is an agricultural state."
Freeman lives in Charleston, a small town in the Mississippi Delta where farming is the main economic engine. The area has been plagued by poverty, illiteracy and racial tensions.
Freeman said in the fundraising letter that Luckett, who co-owns the Ground Zero Blues Club and the upscale Madidi restaurant with the actor, will help the state improve education, health care and economic development.
"Holding on to the old politics of race, class and region has starved Mississippi for too long," Freeman wrote in the letter released to AP. "... Bill Luckett will work diligently to see that the rhetoric that has divided us will never again keep us from tackling such problems."
Freeman spotlighted the race issues in "Prom Night in Mississippi," a documentary that aired on HBO about the first integrated senior prom at Charleston High School in 2008.
Next up for Freeman is a role as Nelson Mandela in the post-apartheid drama "Invictus." The film opens Dec. 11.
Mississippi Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant and businessman Dave Dennis, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board in New Orleans, have said they'll seek the Republican nomination for governor. No other prominent Democrats have publicly said they'll run.
Carrie Underwood to host variety special on Fox
NEW YORK (AP) - The Fox network says Carrie Underwood will host a two-hour variety special tentatively titled, "Carrie Underwood: An All-Star Holiday Special," to air Dec. 7.
The network says Underwood will perform new music from her upcoming album, previous hits and holiday classics. Musical guests will include Dolly Parton, Brad Paisley and David Cook.
Underwood won season four of "American Idol." The 26-year-old country singer is a four-time Grammy winner.
Her new album will be released Nov. 3.
Model Heidi Klum gives birth to daughter
BERLIN (AP) - German-born model Heidi Klum has given birth to a daughter, Lou Sulola Samuel - her fourth child.
Klum, who is married to Grammy-winning singer Seal, says on her Web site that the baby was born on Friday.
In the message posted Tuesday, Klum says: "She is beautiful beyond words and we are happy that she chose us to watch her grow over the coming years."
Klum already has two young sons with Seal, whom she married in 2005. The 36-year-old also has another daughter from a previous relationship.
Janet Jackson's greatest hits includes new single
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Janet Jackson is topping her latest greatest-hits collection with a new single.
The greatest-hits collection, called "Number Ones," includes 33 classic Jackson hits and her newest song, "Make Me." The two-disc album will be released Nov. 17.
"Number Ones" spans the pop star's career, from her 1986 debut, "Control," to last year's "Discipline." Jackson's last greatest hits album was released in 1995.
The 43-year-old singer is working on an autobiography and a new studio album set for release next year.
Tom Hanks hasn't forgotten theater roots
CLEVELAND (AP) - Tom Hanks says he still has fond memories of his first acting job, which kept him working into the early morning changing sets on a high school stage.
Hanks was in Cleveland on Monday to raise money for a new home for the Ohio theater troupe that gave him that early break.
The Oscar winner's first performances were with the Great Lakes Theater Festival in 1977 at Lakewood High School.
He told WVIZ, a local PBS affiliate, that he remembers not having any money and going to the theater to help change sets for the next day's show.
Hanks says it was in Cleveland that he started his hobby of collecting old manual typewriters after a repair shop owner refused to fix his plastic portable machine.
That's when he bought a Swiss-made typewriter that now sells for $695.