WASHINGTON — Madame Tussauds wax museum is adding Michelle Obama to its collection in Washington.

Museum officials yesterday released pictures of the design process, which takes six months, and said the figure will be unveiled in March.

It is being created at Merlin Studios in London and will be placed alongside President Obama's figure in a replica Oval Office.

ROWLAND SEEKING A NEW DESTINY

NEW YORK — Kelly Rowland says she will always be a part of Beyonce's family but no longer will be managed by the superstar's father.

Rowland and Matthew Knowles announced it yesterday as an amicable split. He's guided her career since she was a kid, when he put her in Destiny's Child with Beyonce. He even helped raise her.

Rowland, 27, has sold millions of records as part of Destiny's Child, but her solo career hasn't done as well. Knowles manages Beyonce.

LIFE IN PHAT LANE LEADS TO MEXICO

MEXICO CITY — Kimora Lee Simmons is ignoring the recession and expanding her fashion empire into Latin America.

Simmons is in Mexico City this week to introduce her Baby Phat line at Liverpool department stores.

Simmons, the star of the Style Network reality series "Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane," said the best way to fight the downturn is to seize opportunities.

She said yesterday that her company has downsized a bit in venue for the upcoming New York Fashion Week but "we will never walk away from fashion. We will never turn our back on fashion."

BOYHOOD HOME OF AUTHOR BURNS

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The boyhood home of Pulitzer-winning author Cormac McCarthy, long abandoned and overgrown, has been destroyed by a fire even as preservationists tried in recent months to save it.

"We have lost a literary landmark," Kim Trent of the nonprofit Knox Heritage group said yesterday, a day after the two-story wood-frame structure was reduced to a smoldering ruin.

McCarthy lived in the house for at least a decade, years before he wrote "All the Pretty Horses" and "No Country for Old Men" (the 2007 movie adaptation of which won an Oscar for best picture). His 2007 novel "The Road" won a Pulitzer Prize.