• Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old comedian from South Africa who has contributed to The Daily Show a handful of times in recent months, will become Jon Stewart's replacement as host, Comedy Central announced Monday. Noah was chosen a little more than a month after Stewart unexpectedly announced he was leaving The Daily Show after 16 years as the show's principal voice. New Jersey native Stewart is being replaced by the son of a black South African mother and white European father. Noah has an international presence, and hosted a late-night talk show in South Africa, Tonight With Trevor Noah. In an interview, Noah likened himself to Stewart as a fellow progressive. "Obviously where you're from may inform a lot of your decisions. But traveling the world I learned that progressives, regardless of their locations, think in a global space," he said by phone from Dubai, where he is on a comedy tour. "Although I'm a guy who happens to be not from the same place that Jon's from," he added, "I've lived in America for years before I went back out on the road and I've learned to love the place." Noah made his debut on The Daily Show last December with a segment that poked fun at cliched American images of his native Africa. With a reference to the "hands up" gesture that was a symbol of protesters in Ferguson, Mo., Noah said, "I never thought I'd be more afraid of police here than in South Africa. It kind of made me nostalgic for the old days back home." Stewart hasn't set a date for his exit from The Daily Show, and Comedy Central said nothing on Monday about when Noah would take over.
• The singer-songwriter behind the 1969 rock hit "Spirit in the Sky" was hospitalized on Sunday after being critically injured in a Northern California car accident that killed a motorcyclist. Norman Greenbaum, 72, a longtime resident of Santa Rosa, was the passenger of a Subaru Outback that collided with a motorcycle at a street intersection near the city on Saturday, the California Highway Patrol said. The motorcycle driver, Ihab Usama Halaweh, 20, of Santa Rosa, died at the scene; his passenger and Greenbaum were taken to the hospital with critical injuries. A spokesman for Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Vanessa DeGier, declined to release Greenbaum's condition on Sunday, saying that his family requested privacy. The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reported that a nursing supervisor at the hospital said he remained in critical condition. The newspaper said the Subaru driver was not injured and investigators do not believe that alcohol or drugs were factors in the accident.
A Section on 03/31/2015