People in the News

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Doris Lessing is unable to travel to Stockholm to receive her Nobel Prize in literature on Dec. 10 due to back problems, the Nobel Foundation said Wednesday.

Instead, the $1.5 million prize will be presented to the 87-year-old British writer in London, it said.

"Unfortunately her medical advisers have said she must not travel,” the foundation said.

Foundation spokeswoman Annika Pontikis told The Associated Press that Lessing canceled the trip because of back problems.

In London, Lessing’s representative, Olivia Guest, confirmed the cancellation had "to do with her back.”

Lessing was awarded the prize for her "skepticism, fire and visionary power” in novels, short stories, memoirs and plays that reflected her own unexpected journeys across time, space and ideology, the Swedish Academy said.

She had been invited to collect the award at the ceremony in Stockholm along with the Nobel winners in chemistry, physics, medicine and economics on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of prize founder Alfred Nobel 1896.

The Nobel Peace Prize is presented in Oslo, Norway, on the same date.

Literature prize winners traditionally give a lecture in Stockholm before accepting the award. Lessing’s lecture would be prerecorded and shown at the academy on Dec. 7, the foundation said.

Guest said she hoped Lessing would be able to record her lecture in London, but added that plans to do so "aren’t set in stone.”

Lessing is the third literature laureate in the past four years to miss the Nobel festivities.

The 2005 winner, Harold Pinter, stayed home in Britain because of poor health. In 2004, Austria’s Elfriede Jelinek declined the invitation, saying she was "not in a mental shape to withstand such ceremonies.”

Jean-Paul Sartre, in 1964, is the only winner to have turned down the literature award altogether.

Judge: Lohan’s deposition in lawsuit can be videotaped

LOS ANGELES — Lindsay Lohan will soon appear on camera for a taping she has tried hard to avoid.

A judge on Tuesday said he would allow the videotaping of Lohan’s deposition in a lawsuit over a car crash that injured a busboy.

Raymundo Ortega alleges that Lohan drove her Mercedes-Benz into a van he was driving in October 2005 after she drank alcohol and later tried to escape paparazzi.

A California Highway Patrol investigation concluded that Ortega caused the crash by making an illegal U-turn in Beverly Hills.

Lohan attorney David J. Ozeran argued in a motion that a leak of the videotape could hurt his client’s career much more than the $200,000 in damages that Ortega is seeking.

Videotaped depositions are fairly common in civil cases. But Ozeran wrote that the real purpose of videotaping the 21-year-old actress is to annoy and worry her.

Usher and wife Tameka Foster welcome their first child, a son

ATLANTA — Usher is the father of a baby boy. His wife, Tameka Foster, gave birth to their son, Usher Raymond V, in Atlanta on Monday night, a publicist for the 29-year-old singer said in an e-mail to the Associated Press.

The baby weighed 7 pounds, 9 ounces. He is the couple’s first child. Foster, 37, has three children from a previous marriage.

"We are so happy and proud of our beautiful son. What a blessing!” Usher said in a statement provided Tuesday night by publicist Patti Webster.

The couple wed in a large, glitzy ceremony in early September after exchanging vows a few weeks earlier in a civil ceremony. They had called off their July 28 wedding amid reports that Foster had checked into a hospital because of problems with her pregnancy.

A private ceremony was held Aug. 3 in the office of Usher’s lawyer.

———

On the Net:

Usher:

http://www.usherworld.com/