Names and faces

Justin Bieber's lawyers and Florida prosecutors said Wednesday that they need more time to work out a possible plea deal on charges that the pop star drove under the influence and resisted arrest. Assistant State Attorney David Gilbert and Bieber attorney Mark Shapiro asked for an additional three weeks. Miami-Dade County Judge William Altfield reset the matter for Aug. 5. Gilbert said at a brief hearing that the two sides would inform Altfield on that date how the plea negotiations are progressing "and set a trial date, if necessary." He gave no other details, and Shapiro also would not get into specifics. Bieber did not attend the hearing. Bieber was arrested early Jan. 23 in Miami Beach after what police described as an illegal street race between Bieber's rented Lamborghini and a Ferrari driven by a friend, R&B singer Khalil Amir Sharieff. Neither was charged with drag racing. Alcohol breath tests found Bieber's level below Florida's 0.02 limit for underage drivers but urine tests showed the presence of marijuana and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in his system. Bieber was also charged with resisting arrest and driving on an expired license. Sharieff is charged with driving under the influence.

• The reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most acclaimed novels of the 20th century, says she never gave her approval to a new memoir that portrays itself as a rare, intimate look into the lives of the writer and her older sister in small-town Alabama. "Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood," Harper Lee said in a letter released Monday, just as the new book, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee, was about to released. The book was written by Marja Mills, a former Chicago Tribune reporter, who moved next door to Lee and her sister, Alice, in 2004 and remained there for 18 months. Mills responded in a statement, saying that Lee, known to her friends as Nelle, and her sister "were aware I was writing this book and my friendship with both of them continued during and after my time in Monroeville. The stories they shared with me that I recount in the book speak for themselves." Lee's letter is not the first time she has spoken out against The Mockingbird Next Door. The author, now 88, issued a statement in 2011 after Penguin Press announced that it had acquired the book, saying she had not "willingly participated in any book written or to be written by Marja Mills."

A Section on 07/17/2014

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