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ByThomasAdamson The Associated Press PARIS An unprecedented collection of 1,500 docu- ments from some of histo- ry's greatest women is be- ing auctioned in Paris, in- cluding everything from Catherine the Great's im- perious letter shunning her lover, to Brigitte Bar- dot's plea to cancel the re- lease of a song that ended up being banned in several countries owing to its sex- ual content. The documents, which range from the profound to the banal, also include ones from Napoleon's long- suffering wife Josephine, and a note to a teacher from Grace Kelly. Here are high- lights of the extraordinary two-day sale, starting Tues- day. Catherine — the queen of England from 1509 until 1533, and the first of King Henry VIII's six wives — fell out of favor with the fearsome monarch after she failed to produce a son and heir. In the 1529 let- ter intended to reach the pope, she argues: "I am completely innocent" and being cast aside "without cause." She asks for Hen- ry's planned annulment to be blocked. She also warns — correctly, as it turns out — that Henry will try to split from Rome. It's sim- ply signed "Katherina." Af- ter their divorce, which was not recognized by the pope, Henry sets up a separate Church of England, with himself as its head. It sold Tuesday for 68,750 euros ($86,000). When a royal's daughter fails to do her homework, she doesn't tell the teacher a dog ate it. Grace Patricia Kelly — the American ac- tress who married Prince Rainier III to become the Princess of Monaco — wrote to her daughter Stepha- nie's French teacher after the girl came up short in class. "Please excuse Steph- anie for not having done her French lesson. She left her book at school, Wednesday. Grace de Monaco." EDITH PIAF'S "LA VIE EN REHAB" Dated Jan. 5, 1956, the bittersweet letter from singer Edith Piaf is a loving ode to her then-husband Jacques Pills from the clinic where she was undergoing detox after alcohol and mor- phine addictions. In it, the French cabaret singer of the famous signature song "La vie en Rose" reminds Pills that there will be good days ahead, when she gets released. "Lovely man, have confidence in me as you have always had and you will see it's the good side in me that will win, by the end of the detoxification... you will see that things can start again!" Piaf died seven years later of liver cancer, aged 47. The famously amorous Catherine II of Russia, who was linked to the coup that killed her husband Peter III, is seen in this 1762 let- ter shunning her lover Stan- islas Auguste Poniatowski. He wanted to come to Rus- sia and become her new husband, but he is warned to stay away. Why? The fearsome Catherine had an- other lover and no intention of letting her old flame re- turn to her life or take over her empire. "You read my letters with very little at- tention. I've told you and re- peated that I risk being as- saulted from all sides if you put one foot back in Rus- sia," she says in the blunt letter. It sold Tuesday for €17,500 ($22,000). Blond bombshell Bri- gitte Bardot's letter is a re- quest to a record company to scrap the suggestive, sexually-provocative song "Je t'aime, Moi non Plus." ("I Love You...Me Neither") that she had recorded with Serge Gainsbourg. It was straining her marriage to Gunter Sachs. Written a day after the song was first broadcast in 1967 to Phillips record company, the letter speaks of the "serious and grave personal reasons to not release under any cir- cumstances" the record- ing. The song was with- drawn and later recorded with Gainsbourg's wife Jane Birkin to become one of the iconic hits of the 60s. Despite this, Bardot and Sachs still divorced in 1969. Hardly anything remains of Empress Josephine's let- ter to a friend, crossed out with aggressive ink scrib- bles by her domineer- ing husband. The friend, Queen Charlotte of Wur- temberg, was apparently too politically crucial to re- ceive heartfelt thoughts in writing. Napoleon left about 20 of the original words un- touched, with Josephine's hand nearly completely erased. According to man- uscript specialist Thierry Bodin, "In this instance, Napoleon wanted to make a political union with the Queen Charlotte's daugh- ter, so he dictated what she could say. More broadly, it shows how women's roles became more submissive in the 18th and 19th centuries." It sold Tuesday for €26,250 ($33,000). COLLECTION Letters by history's greatest women are auctioned MICHELEULER—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Auction expert Thierry Bodin, displays a letter from Catherine of Aragon, 1487-1536, at a auction house in Paris, Monday. By Marilynn Marchione The Associated Press CHICAGO Curbing the rou- tine use of preventive anti- biotics before dental work may have contributed to a rise in heart valve infec- tions in England, a new study suggests. In the U.S., the highest risk patients still get these drugs and no similar trend has been seen. Mouths are full of bacte- ria, and certain dental pro- cedures can let them enter the bloodstream, travel to the heart and cause a seri- ous infection called endocar- ditis,whichprovesfatalupto 10 to 20 percent of the time. People with artificial heart valvesandotherimplantsare at high risk, and people with leaky natural heart valves face a moderate risk. It used to be routine to give those people antibiot- ics — usually a single peni- cillin pill — just before den- tal work. But there was lit- tle evidence the preventive treatment lowered infec- tion rates and the drugs sometimes cause serious allergic reactions. Over- use of antibiotics also pro- motes drug-resistant germs — a public health concern. So in 2007, the American Heart Association and oth- ers said the drugs should only be used for the highest risk patients; a year later, regulators in England rec- ommended stopping them for all patients. Researchers from the University of Surrey and Oxford University did a study to see what happened after that in England. They found that prescrip- tions for preventive antibi- otics fell from an average of 10,900 per month in the four years before the policy change to 2,236 per month in the five years after it. Starting in March 2008, heart valve infections started to rise above usual levels, according to hospi- tal records. Five years later, "there were approximately 35 extra endocarditis cases per month than would have been expected" if trends be- fore the antibiotic prescrib- ing change had continued, said one study leader, Dr. Martin Thornhill of the Sheffield School of Clinical Dentistry in England. The work doesn't prove fewer antibiotics caused the surge,heandothersstressed. Heart infections have been rising everywhere because other procedures that make them more likely, such as im- planted medical devices and kidney dialysis, have become more common. There also was never much proof that the pre- ventive antibiotics lowered endocarditis risk. One study even found that brushing teeth twice a day was five times more likely to push bacteria into the blood- stream than having a tooth removed, said Dr. Dhruv Kazi of San Francisco Gen- eral Hospital, an expert with no role in the study. "These should not prompt changes in pre- scription practices," he said of the new results. Dr. Ann Bolger, a cardi- ologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who worked on the Heart Association policy, agreed. "We don't want people to be alarmed. In the U.S., peo- ple who are most at risk are still getting them," she said of the drugs. It wouldn't be wise "to give up on the pol- icy too soon and return to a treatment with no benefit and known risks." The study was discussed Tuesday at a Heart Asso- ciation conference in Chi- cago and published by the British journal Lancet. The work was sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the British charity group Heart Research UK, and Simplyhealth, a British insurer. ENDOCARDITIS Study links some dental drugs to heart infection risk By Josef Federman The Associated Press JERUSALEM Israel vowed harsh retaliation Tuesday for a Palestinian attack that killed five people and left blood-smeared prayer books and shawls on the floor of a synagogue in Je- rusalem — an assault that sharply escalated already- high tensions after weeks of religious violence. The attack during morn- ing prayers in the west Jeru- salem neighborhood of Har Nof was carried out by two Palestinian cousins wield- ing meat cleavers, knives and a handgun. They were shot to death by police after the deadliest assault in the holy city since 2008. Four of the dead were rabbis and one was a po- lice officer who died of his wounds hours after the at- tack. Three of the rabbis were born in the United States and the fourth was born in England, although all held dual Israeli citi- zenship. Five others were wounded. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas con- demned the attack, the first time he has done so in the wave of deadly violence against Israelis. But he also called for an end to Israeli "provocations" surrounding Jerusalem's shrines that are sacred to both Muslims and Jews. President Barack Obama called the attack "horrific" and without justification, urging cooperation from both sides to ease ten- sions and adding that too many Israelis and Pales- tinians have died in recent months, Tuesday's attack, how- ever, appeared to mark a turning point, with the gruesome scene in a house of worship shocking a na- tion long accustomed to vi- olence. The government released a photo of a meat cleaver it said came from the crime scene. Government video showed blood-soaked prayer books and prayer shawls in the synagogue. A pair of glasses lay under a table, and thick streaks of blood smeared the floor. "I saw people lying on the floor, blood everywhere," said Yosef Posternak, who was at the synagogue in the quiet neighborhood that has a large community of English-speaking immi- grants. FIVE SLAIN Is ra el v ow s ha rs h re sp on se to deadly synagogue attack ARIEL SCHALIT — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Israeli rescue workers clean blood from the scene of a shooting attack in a Synagogue in Jerusalem, Tuesday. By Diaa Hadid The Associated Press BEIRUT Syrian aircraft dropped crude explosives on a neighborhood in the northern Aleppo province on Tuesday, killing at least 14 people, including chil- dren, and wounded another 20, activists said. The Qabr al-Inglizi neighborhood was struck by several so-called barrel bombs, according to the Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, and the Britain-based Syrian Obser- vatory for Human Rights, which relies on activists on the ground in the war-torn country. Syrian aircraft have dropped hundreds of bar- rel bombs on rebel-held neighborhoods over the course of the civil war, kill- ing thousands of civilians and causing widespread destruction. The crude tactic — which often involves hurling ex- plosives-filled canisters from helicopters — has been widely criticized by human rights groups be- cause the bombs cannot be precisely targeted. The Observatory said at least 14 people were killed, including five children and three women, and that the death toll was likely to rise because more people were buried under the rubble. It said the bombs struck an ambulance and several mi- crobuses. "Bashar you dog! You op- pressor! May this happen to your children!" a man said in a video purporting to show the aftermath of the attack, referring to Presi- dent Bashar Assad. "These are children, not terrorists!" he said. BARREL BOMBS Syria government airstrikes kill at least 14 PAID ADVERTISEMENT WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM | NEWS | 5 B