“Kate Middleton” pregnant: Duchess of Cambridge expecting with husband Prince William, palace confirms – and “it may be twins”

“Kate Middleton” pregnant: Duchess of Cambridge expecting with husband Prince William, palace confirms – and “it may be twins”: The future king and his beautiful bride surprised Queen Elizabeth and her subjects Monday with the news that the ...

Writer and Filmmaker With a Genius for Humor

nora ephron, an essayist and humorist in the Dorothy Parker mold (only smarter and funnier, some said) who became one of her era’s most successful screenwriters and filmmakers, making romantic comedy hits like sleepless in seattled and “When Harry Met Sally,” died Tuesday night in Manhattan. She was 71.
The cause was pneumonia brought on by acute myeloid leukemia, her son Jacob Bernstein said.
In a commencement address she delivered in 1996 at Wellesley College, her alma mater, Ms. Ephron recalled that women of her generation weren’t expected to do much of anything. But she wound up having several careers, all of them successfully and many of them simultaneously.
She was a journalist, a blogger, an essayist, a novelist, a playwright, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a movie director — a rarity in a film industry whose directorial ranks were and continue to be dominated by men. Her later box-office success included you have got mail and " julie and julia"  By the end of her life, though remaining remarkably youthful looking, she had even become something of a philosopher about age and its indignities.
“Why do people write books that say it’s better to be older than to be younger?” she wrote in “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” her 2006 best-selling collection of essays. “It’s not better. Even if you have all your marbles, you’re constantly reaching for the name of the person you met the day before yesterday.”
Nora Ephron was born on May 19, 1941, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the eldest of four sisters, all of whom became writers. That was no surprise; writing was the family business. Her father, Henry, and her mother, the former Phoebe Wolkind, were Hollywood screenwriters who wrote, among other films.
“Everything is copy,” her mother once said, and she and her husband proved it by turning the college-age Nora into a character in a play, later a movie, " Take her she,s mine" The lesson was not lost on Ms. Ephron, who seldom wrote about her own children but could make sparkling copy out of almost anything else: the wrinkles on her neck, her apartment, cabbage strudel, Teflon pans and the tastelessness of egg-white omelets.
She turned her painful breakup with her second husband, the Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, into a best-selling novel, "Heartburn" which she then recycled into a successful movie starring Jack Nicholson as a philandering husband and Meryl Streep as a quick-witted version of Ms. Ephron herself.
When Ms. Ephron was 4, her parents moved from New York to Beverly Hills, where she grew up, graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1958. At Wellesley, she began writing for the school newspaper, and in the summer of 1961 she was a summer intern in the Kennedy White House. She said later that perhaps her greatest accomplishment there was rescuing the speaker of the house, Sam Rayburn, from a men’s room in which he had inadvertently locked himself. "In an eassy for the new york tion 2013" she said she was also probably the only intern that President John F. Kennedy had never hit on.
After graduation from college in 1962, she moved to New York, a city she always adored, intent on becoming a journalist. Her first job was as a mail girl at Newsweek. (There were no mail boys, she later pointed out.) Soon she was contributing to a parody of The New York Post put out during the 1962 newspaper strike. Her piece of it earned her a tryout at The Post, where the publisher, Dorothy Schiff, remarked: “If they can parody The Post, they can write for it. Hire them.”
Ms. Ephron stayed at The Post for five years, covering stories like the Beatles, the Star of India robbery at the American Museum of Natural History, and a pair of hooded seals at the Coney Island aquarium that refused to mate.
“The Post was a terrible newspaper in the era I worked there,” she wrote, but added that the experience taught her to write short and to write around a subject, since the kinds of people she was assigned to cover were never going to give her much interview time.
In the late 1960s Ms. Ephron turned to magazine journalism, at Esquire and New York mostly. She quickly made a name for herself by writing frank, funny personal essays — about the smallness of her breasts, for example — and tart, sharply observed profiles of people like Ayn Rand, Helen Gurley Brown and the composer and best-selling poet Rod McKuen. Some of these articles were controversial. In one, she criticized Betty Friedan for conducting a “thoroughly irrational” feud with Gloria Steinem; in another, she discharged a withering assessment of Women’s Wear Daily.
But all her articles were characterized by humor and honesty, written in a clear, direct, understated style marked by an impeccable sense of when to deploy the punchline. (Many of her articles were assembled in the collections “Wallflower at the Orgy,” “Crazy Salad” and “Scribble Scribble.”)
Ms. Ephron made as much fun of herself as of anyone else. She was labeled a practitioner of the New Journalism, with its embrace of novelistic devices in the name of reaching a deeper truth, but she always denied the connection. “I am not a new journalist, whatever that is,” she once wrote. “I just sit here at the typewriter and bang away at the old forms.”
Ms. Ephron got into the movie business more or less by accident after her marriage to Mr. Bernstein in 1976. He and Bob Woodward, his partner in the Watergate investigation, were unhappy with William Goldman’s script for the movie version of their book "ALL THE PRISIDENT,S MEN" so Mr. Bernstein and Ms. Ephron took a stab at rewriting it. Their version was ultimately not used, but it was a useful learning experience, she later said, and it brought her to the attention of people in Hollywood.
Her first screenplay, written with her friend Alice Arlen, was for "silkwood" a 1983 film based on the life of Karen Silkwood, who died under suspicious circumstances while investigating abuses at a plutonium plant where she had worked. Ms. Arlen was in film school then, and Ms. Ephron had scant experience writing for anything other than the page. But Mike Nichols, who directed the movie (which starred Ms. Streep and Kurt Russell), said that the script made an immediate impression on him. He and Ms. Ephron had become friends when she visited him on the set of catch_22"
“I think that was the beginning of her openly falling in love with the movies,” Mr. Nichols said in an interview, “and she and Alice came along with ‘Silkwood’ when I hadn’t made a movie in seven years. I couldn’t find anything that grabbed me.” He added: “Nora was so funny and so interesting that you didn’t notice that she was also necessary. I think a lot of her friends and readers will feel that.”
Ms. Ephron followed “Silkwood” three years later with a screenplay adaptation of her own novel “Heartburn,” which was also directed by Mr. Nichols. But it was her script for “When Harry Met Sally,” which became a hit Rob Reiner movie in 1989 starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, that established Ms. Ephron’s gift for romantic comedy and for delayed but happy endings that reconcile couples who are clearly meant for each other but don’t know it.
“When Harry Met Sally” is probably best remembered for Ms. Ryan’s table-pounding faked orgarm sences with Mr. Crystal in Katz’s Delicatessen on the Lower East Side, prompting a middle-aged woman (played by Mr. Reiner’s mother, Estelle Reiner) sitting nearby to remark to her waiter, indelibly, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
The scene wouldn’t have gotten past the Hollywood censors of the past, but in many other respects Ms. Ephron’s films are old-fashioned movies, only in a brand-new guise. Her 1998 hit, “You’ve Got Mail,” for example, which she both wrote (with her sister Delia) and directed, is partly a remake of the old Ernst Lubitsch film ‘The Shop Around the Corner.”
Ms. Ephron began directing because she knew from her parents’ example how powerless screenwriters are (at the end of their careers both became alcoholics) and because, as she said in her Wellesley address, Hollywood had never been very interested in making movies by or about women. She once wrote, “One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there’s no confusion about who’s to blame: you are.”
Mr. Nichols said he had encouraged her to direct. “I knew she would be able to do it,” he recalled. “Not only did she have a complete comprehension of the process of making a movie — she simply soaked that up — but she had all the ancillary skills, the people skills, all the hundreds of things that are useful when you’re making a movie.”

Her first effort at directing, "this is my life" (1992), with a screenplay by Ms. Ephron and her sister Delia, based on a novel by Meg Wolitzer about a single mother trying to become a standup comedian, was a dud. But Ms. Ephron redeemed herself in 1993 with “Sleepless in Seattle” (she shared the screenwriting credits), which brought Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan together so winningly that they were cast again in “You’ve Got Mail.”
Among the other movies Ms. Ephron wrote and directed were "lucky number" (2000), "bewitched"(2005) and, her last, “Julie & Julia” (2009), in which Ms. Streep played Julia Child.
She and Ms. Streep had been friends since they worked on “Silkwood” together. “Nora just looked at every situation and cocked her head and thought, ‘Hmmmm, how can I make this more fun?’ ” Ms. Streep wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday.
Ms. Ephron earned three Oscar nominations for best screenplay, for “Silkwood,” “Sleepless in Seattle” and “When Harry Met Sally.” But in all her moviemaking years she never gave up writing in other forms. Two essay collections (2006) and “I Remember Nothing” (2010), were both best sellers. With her sister Delia she wrote a play, “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” about women and their wardrobes (once calling it “ ‘The Vagina Monologues’ without the vaginas”) and by herself she wrote "imagniry friends" a play, produced in 2002, about the literary and personal quarrel between Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy.
She also became an enthusiastic blogger for The Huffington Post, writing on subjects like the Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn’s accidentally putting a hole in a Picasso he owned and Ryan ONeal’s failing to recognize his own daughter and making a pass at her.
Several years ago, Ms. Ephron learned that she had myelodysplastic syndrome, a pre-leukemic condition, but she kept the illness a secret from all but a few intimates and continued to lead a busy, sociable life.
“She had this thing about not wanting to whine,” the writer Sally Quinn said on Tuesday. “She didn’t like self-pity. It was always, you know, ‘Suck it up.’ ”
Ms. Ephron’s first marriage, to the writer Dan Greenburg, ended in divorce, as did her marriage to Mr. Bernstein. In 1987 she married Nicholas Pileggi, the author of the books “Wiseguy” and"casino"  (Her contribution to “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure,” edited by Larry Smith, reads: “Secret to life, marry an Italian.”)
In addition to her son Jacob Bernstein, a journalist who writes frequently for the Styles section of The Times, Ms. Ephron is survived by Mr. Pileggi; another son, Max Bernstein, a rock musician; and her sisters Delia Ephron; Amy Ephron, who is also a screenwriter; and Hallie Ephron, a journalist and novelist.
In person Ms. Ephron — small and fine-boned with high cheeks and a toothy smile — had the same understated, though no less witty, style that she brought to the page.
“Sitting at a table with Nora was like being in a Nora Ephron movie,” Ms. Quinn said. “She was brilliant and funny.”
She was also fussy about her hair and made a point of having it professionally blow-dried twice a week. “It’s cheaper by far than psychoanalysis and much more uplifting,” Ms. Ephron said.
Another friend, Robert Gottlieb, who had edited her books since the 1970s, said that her death would be “terrible for her readers and her movie audience and her colleagues.” But “the private Nora was even more remarkable,” he added, saying she was “always there for you with a full heart plus the crucial dose of the reality principle.”
Ms. Streep called her a “stalwart.”
“You could call on her for anything: doctors, restaurants, recipes, speeches, or just a few jokes, and we all did it, constantly,” she wrote in her e-mail. “She was an expert in all the departments of living well.”
The producer Scott Rudin recalled that less than two weeks before her death, he had a long phone session with her from the hospital while she was undergoing treatment, going over notes for a pilot she was writing for a TV series about a bank compliance officer. Afterward she told him, “If I could just get a hairdresser in here, we could have a meeting.”

Kevin Youkilis traded to White Sox

By Peter Abraham and Nick Cafardo, Globe Staff

The Red Sox have traded infielder Kevin Youkilis to the Chicago White Sox, major league sources told the Globe.
The Red Sox received 25-year-old righthander Zach Stewart and utility player Brent Lillibridge.
The Red Sox also will be picking up $5.5 million of the $6.6 million Youkilis has remaining on his contract for this season. The White Sox would be responsible for a $1 million buyout on a $13 million team option for 2013.

Stewart, 25, is a former third-round pick from Texas Tech who was once considered a hot prospect. But thisis the third time he has been traded in a span of four years, going from the Reds to Blue Jays and then to the White Sox and now to the Red Sox.
Stewart is 3-8 with a 5.92 earned run average in 31 career appearances, 12 of them starts. He was 1-2 with a 6.00 ERA in 18 appearances (one start) for the White Sox this season. He has thrown 30 innings, giving up 41 hits and striking out 16 with four walks.
The Reds traded Stewart, Edwin Encarnacion and Josh Roenicke to the Blue Jays for Scott Rolen at the 2008 trade deadline.
In 2011, again in July, he and Jason Frasor went to the White Sox for Edwin Jackson and Mark Teahen. Stewart could be developed as starter depth by the Red Sox.
Lillibridge, 28, is a career .215 hitter with the Braves and White Sox. He has played every position except pitcher and catcher.
Lillibridge will be reporting to the Red Sox with Stewart being assigned to Triple A Pawtucket.
To make room on the 40-man roster, the Red Sox designated Double-A left fielder Oscar Tejeda for assignment

UFC's Franklin survives Silva in hostile territory

BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil — Rich Franklin's best days may be behind him, but the veteran mixed martial artist still has a flair for the dramatic.
The former middleweight champion survived a second-round knockdown and rallied to outpoint Brazilian legend Wanderlei Silva in hostile territory at Saturday's UFC 147 event.
The 190-pound catchweight fight headlined UFC 147's pay-per-view lineup and took place at a sold-out Estadio Jornalista Felipe Drumond in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte.
Franklin, who took the fight on four weeks' notice for injured Vitor Belfort, silenced a very pro-Silva crowd with a five-round unanimous-decision victory (49-46 on all scorecards). Franklin also outpointed "The Axe Murderer" three years ago at UFC 99.
The 37-year-old Franklin and 35-year-old Silva entered UFC 147 a combined 5-9 in their previous 14 fights. It's hardly the success that warrants headlining spots, but the fan favorites have been proven draws. So with few other options available, officials booked the rematch and hoped to capitalize on Silva's fame in his home country.
Franklin, though, proved quicker to the punch throughout the fight, and despite a 16-month layoff due to shoulder-surgery recovery, his conditioning and durability were superb. Both helped him survive Silva's second-round knockdown and subsequent ground-and-pound assault that had "Ace" in survival mode until he was saved by the bell.
The series, in fact, admittedly sapped Silva (34-12-1 MMA, 4-7 UFC) of energy, and Franklin (29-6 MMA, 14-5 UFC) capitalized in the later rounds to set up the decision win.
"I honestly don't remember it," Franklin said of the second-round right hook that floored him. "When that kind of stuff happens, you remember bits and pieces. ... I was operating on auto-pilot for a while."
Franklin, who had been toiling in the light-heavyweight division after losing his middleweight belt to dominant champ Anderson Silva, said he's planning a return to his former weight class for one final title run before retirement.
-- Ferreira, Bezerra win 'TUF: Brazil'
In the night's other featured bouts, two tournament winners were crowned as part of the conclusion of "The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil."
The first international edition of the UFC's long-running reality series drew big ratings in Brazil, so it was fitting the tourney conclusions were booked for the UFC's Brazilian event.
In the middleweight-tournament final, Cezar "Mutante" Ferreira (5-2 MMA, 1-0 UFC) topped Sergio "Serginho" Moraes (6-3 MMA, 0-1 UFC) via unanimous decision. In the featherweight final, Rony "Jason" Mariano Bezerra (10-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) did the same to Godofredo "Pepey" de Oliveira (8-1 MMA, 0-1 UFC).
Both winners receive long-term UFC contracts and will feature prominently on future cards.
-- Full UFC 147 results:
Rich Franklin def. Wanderlei Silva via unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 49-46)
Cezar "Mutante" Ferreira def. Sergio "Serginho" Moraes via unanimous decision (29-28, 30-27, 30-27) - to win "TUF: Brazil" middleweight tourney
Rony "Jason" Mariano Bezerra def. Godofredo "Pepey" de Oliveira via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28) - to win "TUF: Brazil" featherweight tourney
Fabricio Werdum def. Mike Russow via TKO (punches) - Round 1, 2:28
Hacran Dias def. Yuri Alcantara via unanimous decision (29-28, 30-27, 30-27)
Rodrigo Damm def. Anistavio "Gasparzinho" Medeiros via submission (rear-naked choke) - Round 1, 2:12
Francisco "Massaranduba" Drinaldo def. Delson "Pe de Chumbo" Heleno via TKO (punches) - Round 1, 4:21
Hugo "Wolverine" Viana def. John "Macapa" Teixeira via split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
Thiago "Bodao" Perpetuo def. Leonarda "Macarrao" Mafra via TKO (punches) - Round 3, 0:41
Marcos "Vina" Vinicius def. Wagner "Galeto" Campos via TKO (strikes) - Round 3, 1:04
Felipe Arantes and Milton Vieira fight to a split draw (29-28, 28-29, 28-28)

Alan Turing’s Brother: He Should Be Alive Today

June 23rd is the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, father of computer science and artificial intelligence, who committed suicide just shy of 42. In a shocking and frank memoir, his late elder brother John says Alan’s life might have turned out a lot better if his mother was not so nagging—and he recounts the details of his brother’s awful death.

Alan Turing, who was born 100 years ago on June 23, 1912, might not have invented the computer. (That honor goes to Charles Babbage and Lord Byron's daughter.) But today’s computing would be unthinkable without the contributions of the British mathematician, who laid down the foundations of computer science, broke Nazi codes that helped win World War II at the famous Bletchley Park, created a secure speech encryption system, made major contributions to logic and philosophy, and even invented the concept of Artificial Intelligence. But he was also an eccentric and troubled man who was persecuted (and prosecuted) for being gay, a tragedy that contributed to his suicide just short of the age of 42 when he died of cyanide poisoning, possibly from a half-eaten apple found by his side. He is hailed today as one of the great originators of our computing age.

In 1959, four years after Alan Turing’s suicide just shy of the age of 42, his mother Sara published her biography Alan M. Turing. Shortly after, his elder brother John began his own alternative account, seeking to “put the record straight” and correct any inaccuracies or biases in his mother’s version. Although he worked on the essay throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, John declined to release the account until after his mother’s death, and ultimately left it unpublished in his private papers. It was found in a drawer by his son John Dermot Turing, and finally included as part of the re-release of  alan m turning, in celebration of the centenary of his birth. The following is adapted from the book:

My brother Alan was born on 21* June 1912 in a London nursing home. At this, and at all other times, my father took all decisions of consequence in the family. Now, rightly or wrongly, he decided that he and my mother should return alone to India, leaving both children with foster parents in England. Alan and I were left with “the Wards”—always we referred to them as “the Wards.” We were the wards and they were our guardians but no matter—this was to be the centre of our existence for many years and our home from home. I believe it was here, perhaps in the first four or five years at the Wards, perhaps even in the first two, that Alan became destined for a homosexual. Has anyone mentioned it until now?

No. My mother was fully aware of it before Alan’s death (not, I imagine, that she had the faintest idea of what it implied), but she makes no reference to it in her book. One can put that down to Edwardian reticence if one pleases. In my view, based on such conversation as I had with my mother about it, necessarily reduced to a minimum, her reaction was much what one might expect if a specialist had informed her that her son was color blind or had an incurable obsession with spiders: it was a nasty shock of brief duration and of no great significance. I am trying to make this memoir as truthful as I can, so I will not go to the length of pretending that I like homosexuals. To my mind, what is intolerable is the world of the “gay crusade” and, as my unfortunate brother may be cast in the part of an early and valiant crusader, this is by no means an irrelevant comment.
My mother, perhaps unwittingly, gives the impression in her book that she recognized Alan’s genius from the start, and that she sedulously fostered it. If so, she did not give that impression in the family at the time; in fact, quite the contrary.

My father, on the whole, either ignored my brother’s eccentricities, or viewed them with amused tolerance but (as will appear) there were deep dudgeons when Alan started to accumulate appalling school reports at Sherborne. As for myself, with the selfishness of youth, and separated by a gap of four years, I did not care what Alan did, and I was content to go my own way, as indeed he was content to go his. Our interests were so dissimilar that they never clashed. The only person in the household who was forever exasperated with Alan, constantly nagging him about his dirty habits, his slovenliness, his clothes and his offhand manners (and much else, most of it with good reason) was my mother. If this was due to some early recognition of his genius, she was certainly doing nothing to foster it by trying to press him into a conventional mould. Needless to say, she achieved nothing by it except a dogged determination on Alan’s part to remain as unconventional as possible. The truth of the matter, as I now view it in retrospect, is that neither of Alan’s parents or his brother had the faintest idea that this tiresome, eccentric and obstinate small boy was a budding genius. The business burst upon us soon after he went to Sherborne. After a few terms, it became apparent that he was far ahead of the other boys in mathematics: when Alan was sixteen, the maths master told my mother that there was nothing more that he could teach him and he would have to progress from there on his own. I think it must have been when Alan was due to take the School Certificate examination (now replaced by “O” levels) that he read Hamlet in the holidays. My father was delighted when Alan placed the volume on the floor and remarked “Well, there’s one line I like in this play.” My father could already see a burgeoning interest in English literature. But his hopes were dashed when Alan replied that he was referring to the final stage direction.

Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson 'arrested in Germany'

The founder of US-based anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, Paul Watson, has been arrested in Germany, the group says.

In a statement, it said Mr Watson was detained in Frankfurt and now faces extradition to Costa Rica.
It quotes German police as saying the arrest relates to a confrontation over shark fining in 2002.
Sea Shepherd is a controversial direct action group best known for disrupting Japan's annual whale hunt.
In the past there have been collisions between its vessels and the whaling fleet, and its activists have also boarded Japanese vessels.
Mr Watson tweeted late on Sunday: "I am currently being held in Frankfurt on charges from Costa Rica. Court appearance in the morning."
Attempted murder claim The German warrant related to an "alleged violation of ships traffic" which took place in Guatemalan waters in 2002, the group said, when it "encountered an illegal shark fining operation" - referring to the practice of catching sharks, slicing off their valuable fins and returning the shark to the water where it will usually die.
On order of the Guatemalan authorities, the group says, it instructed the crew of the Costa Rican vessel in question, the Varadero, to head back to port to be prosecuted.
"While escorting the Varadero back to port, the tables were turned and a Guatemalan gunboat was dispatched to intercept the Sea Shepherd crew," the statement claims.
"The crew of the Varadero accused the Sea Shepherd of trying to kill them, while the video evidence proves this to be a fallacy.
"To avoid the Guatemalan gunboat, Sea Shepherd then set sail for Costa Rica, where they uncovered even more illegal shark fining activities in the form of dried shark fins by the thousands on the roofs of industrial buildings."
Media cite Costa Rican reports as saying Mr Watson also faces an outstanding warrant for attempted murder stemming from the same incident.
According to Sea Shepherd, Mr Watson is being assisted in jail by European deputies Daniel Cohn Bendit and Jose Bove.

Syrian clashes 'kill 23 soldiers' in city of Rastan

At least 23 soldiers have died in heavy clashes in the central Syrian city of Rastan, according to activists.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens were wounded in the attack in the city, in the restive province of Homs.
Three troop carriers were destroyed in fighting, the group said.
If confirmed, the attack would be one of the deadliest suffered by security forces in the 14-month-long uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
It comes after government forces launched a fresh assault on the city at the weekend, despite a UN-backed nominal ceasefire that was supposed to come into effect just over a month ago.
Dozens of people have been wounded in shelling in the city, the Observatory said.
At least 30 people died on Sunday - mainly civilians - as violence surged at flashpoints across the country despite an increase of UN observers.
The figures cannot be verified independently, as journalists' movements are severely restricted in Syria.
The UN on Sunday said it had 189 observers in Syria, two thirds of the total intended for deployment as part of the six-point peace plan mediated by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.