Gwinnett Daily Post

LaBelle sued over beating

HOUSTON -- A West Point cadet and former Army football player is suing veteran R&B diva Patti LaBelle, saying she ordered her bodyguards to beat him up as he waited for a ride home outside a Houston airport terminal.

The lawsuit alleges the cadet, Richard King, was waiting for his brother and father to pick him up outside one of the terminals at Bush Intercontinental Airport on March 11, when three of LaBelle's bodyguards attacked him. King was in Houston, his hometown, while on spring break from West Point.

''Apparently, defendant LaBelle believed King was standing too close to her (no doubt expensive) luggage, even though he was oblivious to her presence and the danger he was in,'' according to King's lawsuit, which was filed in Houston civil court on Wednesday and also names the bodyguards, the airport and a taxi dispatcher as co-defendants. ''LaBelle lowered the window of her limousine and gave a command to her bodyguards. They sprang into action.''

Harry Bernstein dies at age 101

NEW YORK -- Harry Bernstein, whose acclaimed memoir of an English childhood haunted by anti-Semitism -- ''The Invisible Wall'' -- was published when he was 96, has died at 101.

Bernstein died Friday at his daughter's Brooklyn home, Bruce Frankel, a friend and author, told The Associated Press.

Critics have compared Bernstein's world of pain and prejudice to those of D.H. Lawrence and Isaac Bashevis Singer -- and especially to Frank McCourt's ''Angela's Ashes,'' which details McCourt's Irish upbringing.

Bernstein had written 40 other books but destroyed most of the manuscripts after they were rejected by publishers. His eventual success became an inspiration for other struggling authors, and in 2008 -- at age 98 -- he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue his writing.

After ''The Invisible Wall,'' Bernstein wrote three more books, including ''What Happened to Rose'' -- to be published next year in Italy, where he has a following.