C2


R


KLMNO


Justice league does bookish well


A year after she joined the Supreme


Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor has signed a deal to pen a memoir for Alfred A. Knopf, the publishing house announced Monday. Too soon? Actually, recent history


suggests strong reader interest and big money in the stories of top-court pioneers and how they got there. Past Supreme Court memoirs tended to hit the market after their authors left the bench. But Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s “Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest,” was released in 2002, four years before the court’s first female jurist retired. Focusing on her pre-SCOTUS years, it spent a few weeks on the bestseller lists and sold an impressive 87,579 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan. That sent publishers scrambling after Justice Clarence Thomas. The court’s second African American justice released “My Grandfather’s Son” in 2007. It has sold 206,386 copies and earned him $1.5 million, according to financial disclosures. Like O’Connor and Thomas,


Sotomayor’s book will dwell on her early years, as the child of Puerto Rican immigrants who went from the South Bronx to the Ivy League — “a triumph of the Latino experience in America,” touted Knopf Doubleday Chairman Sonny Mehta in a news release. The as-yet-untitled book will be published simultaneously in a Spanish-language edition.


THE RELIABLE SOURCE For fun, he gets physical


Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger


Steven Chu,who just managed to publish yet another scientific paper while hold- ing down his day job as U.S. secretary of energy, insists that his ongoing physics work isn’t a side gig so much as it is fun. “The first 70 or 75 hours a week abso-


H


lutely go to my real job,” Chu told us late last week on the phone from Texas, where he was tending to oil-spill busi- ness. “This is my hobby. Pleasure time. I could watch TV, I could go play golf — or I could do this.” Pleasure time may not be what you want to devote to reading Chu’s latest ar- ticle in the journal Nature: “Subnano- metre single-molecule localization, reg- istration and distance measurements.” It concerns a system that Chu and two jun- ior colleagues devised to refine the abili- ty of optical microscopes to detect and measure the distance between really, really, really small things going on inside biological matter — down to the size of less than half a nanometer. The previous limit was 15 to 20 nanometers. (A hu- man hair is about 50,000 nanometers wide.) The work took seven or eight years, he said, most of it long before he joined the Obama team. They first submitted the paper about a year ago — and while two reviewers loved it, he said, a third quib- bled that it seemed too technical and suggested more demonstrations, which they crafted before resubmitting suc- cessfully.


So, being energy secretary doesn’t get you any breaks?


“Oh, of course not. Definitely not!”


Chu told us. “Having a Nobel Prize doesn’t get you anywhere either.” (He won his in 1997.)He added: “It’s proba- bly much more fun if you’re a reviewer, and you can shoot down someone like that. That’s the good thing about the re- view process — they don’t care who you are.”


SUSAN BIDDLE/THE WASHINGTON POST Sotomayor’s early years are the focus.


John McTiernan is headed to jail.


JASON RICHARDS/OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS For his day job, Steven Chu tours labs and operates complex devices. “I could go play golf — or I could do this.” — Steven Chu FRED PROUSER/REUTERS The musical couple in 2009.


LOVE, ETC.  Separated: Hip-hop superproducer


The-Dream and singer Christina Milian, after a whirlwind 12 months in which they got engaged, wed in Vegas and had a baby. It broke down just as fast Monday: Photos emerged of him frolicking with another woman; Milian tweeted “whatever you think . . . believe it.” Then he put out a statement to Us Weekly: “Terius ‘The-Dream’ Nash is saddened to announce that his marriage to Christina Milian was unsuccessful.”


mmm, so how about these fed- eral employees who moonlight on the side? Maybe we’re not keeping them busy enough? But


TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2010


THIS JUST IN  Beginning to think Mel Gibson might


be a jerk? In the latest daily outrage, RadarOnline.com released even more tapes Monday, this time of the


imploding superstar seemingly


acknowledging to his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva that he hit her. Los Angeles authorities launched a domestic violence investigation last week.  “Die Hard” director John McTiernan faces up


to a year in prison after pleading guilty in L.A. federal court Monday to perjury and making false statements to the FBI — all this during the feds’ investigation of Hollywood P.I. Anthony Pellicano, now serving a 15-year sentence for bugging famous people’s phone lines.


GOT A TIP ? E-MAIL U S A T RELIABLESOURCE@WASHP OST . COM. FOR THE LA TEST SCOOPS, VISIT WASHINGTONP OST . COM/RELIABLESOUR CE Polanski freed; Swiss reject U.S. extradition request Polanski was arrested in September as


Director can return to France after months of wrangling over 1977 statutory rape case


by Edward Cody


PARIS — Swiss authorities freed French director Roman Polanski on Monday, deciding not to extradite him to Los Angeles to face sentencing for hav- ing sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. The decision, announced by the Jus-


tice Ministry in Berne, followed nearly 10 months of legal struggle between the U.S. Justice Department and Polanski’s attorneys. After his arrest in Zurich in September, the 76-year-old Oscar-win- ning filmmaker was imprisoned and then confined to his ski chalet in the Al- pine resort of Gstaad with an electronic foot bracelet. The Swiss Justice Ministry said in a


statement that the decision reflected doubts over the legal strength of the U.S. extradition request, in particular con- cerning negotiations between Los Ange- les prosecutors and Polanski’s U.S. attor- neys at the time. Justice Minister Eve- line Widmer-Schlumpf said at a news conference that Polanski is now free to leave Switzerland and return to his home in France.


Widmer-Schlumpf emphasized that Switzerland’s decision was not based on a determination of Polanski’s guilt or in- nocence but only on the validity of the extradition request presented by the United States and what she described as Swiss national interests. Switzerland blamed U.S. authorities for failing to provide confidential testimony about Polanski’s sentencing. Lanny A. Breuer, assistant attorney


general for the Justice Department’s criminal division, said the department is “deeply disappointed” by the rejection of the extradition request. “We thought our


he flew into Zurich to be honored with a lifetime achievement award at a film fes- tival. He received Academy Award nomi- nations as Best Director for “Chinatown” (1974), “Tess” (1979) and “The Pianist,” for which he won the 2002 Oscar. He was wanted for fleeing the United


LAURENT CIPRIANI/ASSOCIATED PRESS FREE TO GO:Roman Polanski at his Swiss chalet where he was confined.


extradition request was completely sup- ported . . . by the facts and the law, and the underlying conduct was of course very serious,” he said, adding that the de- partment is reviewing its options in how to respond. The United States cannot appeal the decision, but Polanski is still a fugitive in America. “That warrant remains outstanding,”


Los Angeles Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini said, adding that Polan- ski could be arrested and sent back to America if he traveled to another coun- try that has an extradition deal with the United States. “It is an enormous satisfaction and a


great relief after the pain suffered by Ro- man Polanski and his family,” said Hervé Témime, a French lawyer who was on the team representing the director. The decision constituted a victory not only for Polanski but also for a broad ar- ray of European intellectual and politi- cal figures who had come to his defense with petitions and statements of outrage


DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau


denouncing the effort to continue pros- ecution after so many years. Polanski’s backers, ranging from fel- low directors to French culture and for- eign ministers, criticized U.S. and Los Angeles judicial authorities for seeking what they called crude revenge against a major artist who deserved more respect. Some suggested Switzerland had heeded the extradition request only to relieve U.S. pressure against Swiss bank secrecy laws. French Foreign Minister Bernard


Kouchner called the U.S. extradition re- quest “a little sinister,” coming so long after the fact. His colleague, Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand, said Po- lanski was being “thrown to the lions for an old story that doesn’t really make any sense.” Mitterrand issued a statement Mon-


day expressing satisfaction with the Swiss decision. Another vocal backer, the French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, told reporters in Paris that he was “crazy with joy.”


States three decades ago on the eve of a 1978 sentencing hearing in Los Angeles. The hearing was part of a plea bargain in which Polanski acknowledged having il- legal sex with the girl during a modeling session at the home of the actor Jack Nicholson. Before the deal with Los An- geles prosecutors, Polanski also had been charged with child molestation, rape and sodomy, and providing the girl with illegal drugs. A Los Angeles judge sentenced Polan- ski to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. He was released after 42 days by an evaluator who deemed him mentally sound and unlikely to offend again. The judge then said he would send Polanski back to jail for the remain- der of the 90 days and that afterward he would ask Polanski to agree to a “volun- tary deportation.” Polanski then fled the country. The Swiss government’s main argu- ment concerned confidential testimony by Roger Gunson, the Los Angeles attor- ney in charge of the original prosecution against Polanski. The Swiss asked for the transcript, but Washington rejected the request.


Based on references to Gunson’s testi-


mony in U.S. courts, the Swiss said it “should prove” that Polanski served his sentence after undergoing the diagnos- tic study.


Since then, Polanski has lived in his


native France while avoiding countries that have strong extradition treaties with the United States.


codye@washpost.com


The Associated Press contributed to this report.


CUL DE SAC by Richard Thompson


Stieg Larsson’s unfinished mystery


stockholm — It is September in Sachs Harbour, northern Canada. In the desolate landscape, Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander are about to begin a new adventure. But their journey in the fourth book of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling “Millenni- um” crime series is a mystery. The book was left unfinished on the author’s lap- top when he died suddenly in 2004 at 50.


Only two people know about the con-


tent: Larsson’s longtime partner Eva Ga- brielsson, who won’t reveal the where- abouts of the last installment; and Lars- son’s friend John-Henri Holmberg, who received an e-mail about the book from Larsson weeks before his death. Holm- berg said Larsson was 320 pages into the fourth book. He said the author prob- ably had a detailed outline, making it possible for someone such as Gabri- elsson — who worked closely with Lars- son on the first three books — to com- plete the manuscript. However, Holmberg points out that


completing the story would have to be done soon so it doesn’t become just a “historic curiosity.” Since Larsson’s death the where- abouts of the fourth manuscript has been clouded in mystery. Gabrielsson is involved in a legal dis- pute with the author’s father and broth- er, Erland and Joakim Larsson. The rea- son for the dispute is a Swedish law that stipulates partners aren’t entitled to in- herit from each other unless they are married or have special wills. Like many Swedish couples, Larsson and Gabri- elsson never married, which meant Er- land and Joakim inherited everything after the author’s premature death. Gabrielsson has said she isn’t inter- ested in the money but wants to have the final word on how Larsson’s work is used, a demand the Larsson family hasn’t accepted.


—Associated Press


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54