Harper Lee buried in Alabama hometown

Harper Lee buried in Alabama hometown

MONROEVILLE, Ala.

The author of the American classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” was laid to rest Saturday in a private ceremony attended by only the closest of friends and family, a reflection of how she had lived.

Harper Lee, who died Friday at age 89, was eulogized at a church in the small Alabama town of Monroeville, which the author used as a model for the imaginary town of Maycomb, the setting of Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

A few dozen people who made up Lee’s intimate circle gathered at the First United Methodist Church to hear a eulogy Saturday by her longtime friend and history professor, Wayne Flint. Afterward, her casket was taken by silver hearse to an adjacent cemetery where her father, A.C. Lee, and sister, Alice Lee, are buried.

The town was appropriately somber, a day after its native daughter’s death.

Ann Mote, owner of the Ol’ Curiosities & Book Shoppe in Monroeville, said she thinks the town always will be linked to Lee.

Lock of John Lennon’s hair fetches $35,000

DALLAS

A lock of John Lennon’s hair that was snipped as he prepared for a film role has sold for $35,000.

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions said Saturday that the 4-inch lock of hair was purchased by Paul Fraser, a United Kingdom-based memorabilia collector.

A German hairdresser kept a tuft of Lennon’s hair after giving him a trim before the Beatle started filming “How I Won the War,” a dark comedy released in 1967. The movie follows the World War II misadventures of British troops led by an inept commander.

The hair was one of several Beatles-related items on auction. A photograph of the iconic band signed by all four members went for $42,500. And a sealed copy of the band’s “butcher” cover for the “Yesterday and Today” album went for $125,000.

Migrant documentary ‘Fire at Sea’ wins at Berlin film festival

BERLIN

“Fire at Sea,” a documentary about the Italian island of Lampedusa – many migrants’ first destination on risky journeys toward safety and a better life in Europe – won the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday.

A jury headed by Meryl Streep chose director Gianfranco Rosi’s movie from a field of 18 contenders at the first of the year’s major European film festivals.

Rosi contrasts the native islanders’ everyday life, particularly that of a 12-year-old boy, with the arrival of the many men, women and children making the dangerous trip from Africa across the Mediterranean Sea on decrepit smugglers’ boats.

Many migrants drown on the perilous passage to Europe, their bodies often pulled out of the waters around Lampedusa, a small island between Sicily and Libya.

Egyptian author jailed for 2 years for violating ‘public modesty’

CAIRO

Egyptian author Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in jail Saturday by a Cairo appeals court for publishing a sexually explicit excerpt of his novel that prosecutors said violated “public modesty.”

Mahmoud Othman, a lawyer representing Naji, said the court also ordered the editor-in-chief of Egypt’s top literary magazine, Tarek el-Taher, to pay a 10,000-Egyptian pound ($1,277) fine.

The trial stems from a complaint filed by a private citizen after Akhbar al-Adab magazine published an excerpt from Naji’s novel, “The Use of Life,” in August 2014. The excerpt contains explicit sex acts and references to hashish use by the characters.

Associated Press