Hillary Rodham Clinton refused to take the bait on Tuesday while taping Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, offering no clues about whether she will run for president, but acknowledged that the speculation surrounding her possible candidacy has become "a cottage industry". Stewart introduced Clinton by saying: "She's here solely for one reason: to publicly and definitively declare her candidacy for president of the United States ... I think." That proved not to be true. The two moved on to a series of national and international issues Clinton faced as the secretary of state, including the violence and tension between Israel and the Palestinians. Stewart also plugged Clinton's new book, Hard Choices, calling it a "witness view" to her four years as the chief US diplomat. But he kept returning to the 2016 presidential race, joking: "I think I speak for everybody when I say, no one cares [about the book], they just want to know if you're running for president." – AP
Nick and Vanessa Lachey see pink with second baby
Nick and Vanessa Lachey are expecting their second baby, their publicists confirm. The singer and VH1's Big Morning Buzz Live host first made the announcement on his Twitter account on Tuesday, which also marked the couple's third wedding anniversary. He posted a photo of their almost 2-year-old son, Camden, running on a beach with a heart in the sand that says "It's a girl". In an interview last year, the 40-year-old Nick Lachey said once you have a child "everything changes, from the way you drive to the way you think to the way you act". Vanessa Lachey, 33, last had a role on the 2013 Fox sitcom Dads, which was cancelled. – AP
Harper Lee says she didn’t OK new book
The reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most acclaimed novels of the 20th century, says she never gave her approval to a new memoir that claims to be a rare, intimate look into the lives of the writer and her older sister in small-town Alabama. "Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood," Harper Lee said in a letter on Monday, just as the new book, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee was about to be released. The book was written by Marja Mills, a former Chicago Tribune reporter, who moved next door to Lee and her sister, Alice, in 2004 and remained there for 18 months. Mills responded in a statement, saying that Lee, known to her friends as Nelle, and her sister "were aware I was writing this book and my friendship with both of them continued during and after my time in Monroeville. The stories they shared with me that I recount in the book speak for themselves". – AP
Films from Middle East at Kerala film festival
The seventh edition of the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), which begins in Thiruvananthapuram tomorrow, includes five films from the Middle East in a specially curated section. A World Not Ours, directed by the Dubai-born Mahdi Fleifel, is a humorous portrait of three generations of a family in the refugee camp of Ain Al Helweh in southern Lebanon. Sherief Elkatsha's Cairo Drive explores one of the world's most populated cities through its traffic and streets. The Egyptian filmmaker Ahmed Nour's documentary Waves is on the Egyptian city of Suez and the 2011 revolution. Birds of September, by the Lebanese director Sarah Francis, explores Beirut, capturing candid moments in people's lives. Mais Darwazah's documentary My Love Awaits Me By the Sea is an essay on her experience as a second-generation Palestinian on a first trip to her homeland. The festival runs until July 22. – IANS
artslife@thenational.ae
