Books, as we know, make perfect presents, but sometimes our friends and family aren't as perfect as the books are.
Relatives tend to be unnervingly idiosyncratic, and they often like our carefully chosen
titles about as much as they like broccoli. Author claims she was duped into signing over the
rights on her prizewinning bookHarper Lee, the reclusive author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has sued a literary agent, claiming that he tricked the ageing writer into assigning him copyright on the classic book.The move marks a rare step into the
spotlight for Lee, who
is known for
keeping a low profile for such a household name, living quietly in a tiny town in the deep
south of America and eschewing almost all media requests.However,
in a shock move, 87-year-old Lee has now filed a lawsuit in a Manhattan court alleging that Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee's long-time agent, Eugene Winick, tricked
Lee into signing over the copyright on the book.The case claims that Pinkus "engaged in a scheme
to dupe" Lee
into assigning the copyright without any payment. The ploy is alleged to have taken place
in 2007, five years after Winick became ill and Pinkus started diverting some of his clients into his own company.
Lee's lawsuit says Pinkus engineered the transfer of Lee's rights to secure
himself "irrevocable" interest in the income derived from To Kill A Mockingbird.
It adds
that he also avoided paying legal
obligations that he owed to his father-in-law's company for royalties that Pinkus had allegedly misappropriated.Lee has been suffering declining
health for some years and has
trouble with her eyesight and hearing. The case reveals that when she signed the document she was living in an assisted-living facility after suffering a stroke. It says she argues that she has no memory of agreeing to relinquish her rights to the book and signing an agreement that memorialises the purported transfer of income."Pinkus
knew that Harper Lee
was an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her
to read and see," Gloria Phares, Lee's lawyer,
said in the complaint. The suit also reveals that the copyright was reassigned to Lee last year after she took legal action. Though Pinkus then ceased to be Lee's agent, he was still getting royalties this year, according to the
file. So far Pinkus has
made no comment on the allegations.Lee is one of the most renowned names in modern fiction. To Kill A Mockingbird is an esteemed part of the American canon, with its tale of racial injustice in the deep south. Framed around a young girl called Scout,
it also features her father, heroic lawyer Atticus Finch, as he seeks to
prevent an innocent black man from being convicted of rape.The
book was published in 1960 to wide acclaim. It won a Pulitzer prize and is
a mainstay of literature studies in high schools and universities across America. It has sold more than 30m copies worldwide and
was also made into a classic 1962 film starring Gregory Peck in the role of Finch.However, the book remains Lee's only published novel, though it is far from the only reason that she
aquaponics 4 you major literary figure. Lee had an intensely close relationship with Truman Capote, who was a childhood friend.
She helped Capote on projects such as his famous real-life crime exploration In
Cold Blood and acted as a sort of muse, researcher and confidante for him.But,
unlike the gregarious and attention-hungry
Capote, Lee has always preferred to remain in the shadows of
public life.
She has spent most of her life living quietly with her older sister
in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama. She has rejected almost all interview requests for the past half-century and, despite keeping an
apartment in New York City, has not been a presence on America's literary circuit.An exception has been an obscure essay contest at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In 2006 the New York Times wrote a story describing how Lee had agreed to become a judge for the contest, which featured work from young schoolchildren.
In
one of the only interviews Lee has ever given, the writer told the newspaper about how she was always pleased with the way young people took to her book. "They always see new things in it. And the way they relate it to
their lives now is
really quite incredible," she said.Harper
LeeUnited StatesPulitzer prizeFictionPaul Harrisguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Japan health ministry panel
clears way for official approval after getting
more safety data Nerlens Noel is coming off
a major knee injury. Alex Len is in a walking boot. Participation in research is
essential to continued medical progress, Davis says. Breastfed babies admitted to hospital with dehydration or weight loss rarely suffered serious damage, researchers
findVery few babies become dehydrated and seriously ill because they are not getting enough milk from breastfeeding, according to a study that
calls for better support for mothers to help them establish nursing rather than resorting to formula.Following a series of alarming stories where the plight of individual
babies was described
in medical journals and later in the press, doctors in Bradford and Sheffield began a study to find out how common it was for feeding
to go disastrously wrong.They collected details of every
case of severe neonatal
hypernatraemia – where newborn babies rapidly lose weight, become dehydrated
and develop raised salt levels because they are not getting enough milk – in the UK and Republic of Ireland over one year. If not treated, the condition can lead to seizures, gangrene, brain damage and even death.But
Dr Sam Oddie and colleagues found only 62 cases from May 2009 to June 2010, a prevalence of seven in every 100,000 live births.
In their paper, published on Wednesday in the Archives of
Disease in Childhood and seen exclusively by the Guardian,
they write that all the babies were admitted to hospital,
mostly because of weight loss, and some were intravenously fed.However, all were discharged within
two days to two weeks having gained weight and none had long-term damage.The
evidence should reassure parents
– but the researchers stressed it should also encourage them to seek
natural vitiligo treatment struggling to establish breastfeeding.
There are also milder cases of problems where babies are not feeding properly. But
Oddie and other experts said the answer is not bottle-feeding but more help for women to ensure the baby attaches properly to the breast and is fed often enough.Oddie said: "While we always expected to see low figures for this level of severity, the very nature of these cases made
it important to find out exact data in order to understand what health professionals can do to better support women who breastfeed."This
new British
and Irish research helps us to understand
the scale of the problem
for the very first time so we can now work out what to
do about
it — how to spot it and how to act on it."If picked up soon enough, the effects are easy to reverse with a steady process of
rehydration, but it is not always easy to spot as babies can look pink and alert while being on the verge of becoming critically ill."Measures such as early initiation of breastfeeding,
skilled helpers observing and supporting women breastfeeding, and
targeting help in cases where feeding is difficult – such
as where there is excess weight
loss, decreased stool
output or both – will both support the initiation
of breastfeeding in general and find cases where a more serious problem may be developing."As far as I'm concerned the
answer isn't more formula feeding, but better support for breastfeeding from the outset.
Women who are having difficulties should be
monitored and helped – this is something society really needs to invest in."Almost every baby is capable of breastfeeding, Oddie said. "In only a few cases were there special features of the baby that made it likely that there would be a severe feeding problem. [One of the babies, for instance, was found to have a cleft palate.]
Normally all babies can get established
with breastfeeding with the right support."But Oddie stressed that mothers need confident and well-trained
midwives, health
visitors and other NHS staff to encourage and advise them.
"Healthcare professionals lack confidence in their ability to know when breastfeeding is going well. I think that is interpreted by other healthcare professionals and women as a lack of
confidence in the process
itself."The
paper says that cases of severe hypernatraemia in the UK seem more likely to
be linked to problems around getting breastfeeding established than those in, for instance,
the Netherlands – where
a similar study has been done."It is tempting to speculate that the relatively low rates of initiation and
particularly continuation of breastfeeding in the UK may form part of the
explanation for this," the researchers write."Where long-term breastfeeding is more
common, both health professionals and
friends and family are more familiar with it, more aware of how to do it properly
and more able to pick up on problems."Anne
Woods,
deputy programme manager for Unicef's Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI) – a scheme that gives accreditation to hospitals after training the staff to help mothers breastfeed
– said
the number of babies who
could not
feed was negligible and only a very small percentage – about 1% –
trademiner would struggle to make enough milk.
"The numbers who breastfeed in this country do not reflect the numbers who could breastfeed if they had
effective support," she said.Where
there are problems, she added, "it fundamentally boils down to the fact that the baby is not attached to the breast effectively. The whole of the baby's mouth has to make contact and draw the breast tissue into the mouth."But
because we have a
bottle-feeding culture in the UK, she said, some women do not
realise this and "try to bottle-feed with their breast", so the baby takes only the nipple and
does not get enough milk.The other problem is when babies do not feed often enough. After a difficult labour or pain relief, the baby may
be sleepy. There is also an expectation she said, that a baby will feed and then sleep for four hours.Yet most adults eat or drink
more than six times in 24 hours, she said -even if it is only a cup of tea and a biscuit.In
England, only 20% of hospital maternity
units (accounting for nearly 22% of births) are BFI-accredited by Unicef, compared with 70% in Scotland, 60% in Northern Ireland and 40% in Wales.
But problems can anyway arise once the baby goes home, because visits from midwives and then health visitors are not as common as they were.There are danger signs that women themselves
can look out for, however, and one of the most significant is the frequency of wet and dirty nappies.There should be one soaked nappy in the
first 24
hours, two
in the second 24 hours and after that, half a dozen a day with tarry meconium stools showing by day three
or four and yellow stools thereafter.BreastfeedingHealth
& wellbeingParents and parentingHealthMedical researchSarah Boseleyguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News
and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our
Terms & Conditions |
More Feeds The Complete University Guide in Britain gauges institutions on their entry standards, research and student satisfaction.
The mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe performed songs by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Ray Henderson in her solo debut at Carnegie Hall. ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Orthodox Christians around the world celebrated Easter Sunday, worshipping at candlelit services from Russia to Ethiopia before gathering families for outdoor feasts. With the season for mangoes and pineapples finally arriving, preserve them while they are at their best. How big is the gender gap at schools around the world?
How has the picture changed in recent years?Malala Yousafzai – the young campaigner who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban in Pakistan last October
– has drawn the world's attention to the fight for girls'
access to education. On
Friday, she marks her 16th birthday by delivering a
speech at the UN, and a petition calling on the general assembly "to fund new
teachers, schools, books and recommit to getting every girl and boy in school by December 2015".Globally, more children are in primary school than ever before. Yet
an estimated 57 million remain out of school, and gender disparities are large in many countries.
How big is the gender
forex growth bot pdf schools around the world? How has the picture changed in recent years? The UN uses a gender
parity index (GPI), comparing girls' gross
enrollment rates to those of boys, to track progress towards the millennium
development goal (MDG) target to achieve parity in primary and
secondary education by 2015. A GPI lower than 1.0
signifies more boys in school than girls, with scores above 1.0 reflecting more girls than boys.
At the global level, the MDG target on parity at primary school has already been met. Estimates of global
progress can mask stark
differences at the country or regional level,
however.
Today, the gender gap in primary education is concentrated in a much smaller group of countries.
The visualisation above shows how the picture has changed since the 1970s.
In Pakistan, there are an estimated 82 girls for every 100 boys at primary school. While still far from parity, this reflects significant progress since 1990, when
there were only 52 girls for every 100 boys, and even more
since the early 1970s, when estimates suggest boys outnumbered girls by almost three to one. The table below compares Pakistan's progress towards gender parity at primary school with four nearby countries – Afghanistan, Iran,
India and Tajikistan.At the secondary school level,
less than 40% of countries have met the MDG target on gender parity. The remaining 60% are roughly split between those where boys outnumber girls and others where girls
outnumber boys. In higher education, the global gender gap is significant – but at this level, women outnumber men.
In 2011, there were 108 women studying
at this level for every 100 men.
Men outnumbered women in higher education until the late 1990s, when the world
reached parity. Since 2004, however, the number of women in post-secondary school globally has exceeded that of men, with the gap steadily growing. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where the ratio of women to men studying at this level has dropped – from 66
women for every 100 men in 2000 to 61 in 2011. Last month, the UN warned that
progress on reducing the number of children out of school has ground to a
"virtual standstill".
Between 2008 and 2011, the number of out-of-school children of primary age fell by only 3 million.
"If this rate of change continues over the next few years, the world will still be far from the goal of UPE [universal primary education] in 2015," warned a report from Unesco and the Education for All campaign, which pointed to declining donor support for education. International aid for basic education dropped 6% between 2010
and 2011, with
six of the world's top 10 donors
– Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the US – cutting spending. Aid to secondary education declined by 11%
between 2010 and 2011.Download the full spreadsheet• Download
the data on gender parity in primary, secondary and tertiary educationMore data• More data journalism and data visualisations from the
GuardianWorld government data• Search the world's government data with our gatewayDevelopment and aid data• Search
the world's global development data with our gatewayCan you do something with this data?• Post your visualisations and
tinnitus-miracle our Flickr group• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk• Get the A-Z of
data• More at the Datastore directory• Follow the Guardian data team on Twitter• Follow the Guardian
Global development
team on TwitterUniversal primary educationDevelopment dataMalala YousafzaiThe gender gapGenderPakistanRich HarrisClaire Provostguardian.co.uk
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
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part of "Truly Madly Deeply" that I don't like is letting go of Alan Rickman! He helps Nina get over him, but not me! When Nina places Jamie's cello in its case for the last time, I can hardly bear the finality of it.
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milieu, Bill Paterson, the perfect music choices, but mostly the luminescent brilliance of Juliet Stevenson. Obviously, the scene where she weeps with such anguish and anger is the best on-screen crying in the history of movies.
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