IT WAS supposed to end at birth.
Bonnie Botel-Sheppard was a volunteer who provided guidance and support during pregnancy and childbirth to the homeless young woman who had no mother.

When Janita McGee had her baby nearly three years ago, Bonnie's job with the Philadelphia Alliance for Labor Support as a doula - the emotional equivalent of a midwife - was done. She'd make one more visit the next day and say goodbye.

But when she brought Janita back to the homeless shelter - where she had no blanket, no pillow and no one to help her - Bonnie realized that she'd come to love Janita over the few months they'd spent together.

"I love you, too," Janita said from her shelter bed, exhausted and uncertain how she'd get through.

The next day, Bonnie and her daughter shopped for furniture and bedding for Janita and her baby, William, and transformed the spare shelter room into a homey place.

And ever since, they've connected across the boundaries of age, race, wealth and experience to develop a friendship and bond they describe as that of mother and daughter.

Janita, 21, now has an apartment and a job, and plans to pursue a degree in health management at Philadelphia Community College.

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Annie Proulx, Ludmilla Ulitskaya, Nicolas Fargues and Alissa York will meet at Lyon's International Forum on the Novel later this month to debate the power and purpose of love in fiction. We present exclusive extracts from their answers to the question 'why so much love?'

Annie Proulx
To me love is one of a thousand elements in fiction. Love in a novel is like salt, and I use it like salt to heighten plot and character in uncountable ways. In fiction, as in real life, love is tangled with anger, with compassion as in Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter (which obtuse critics mistook for pity), spirituality, adornment, fashion, parent-child relationships, shifting concepts of physical beauty, sacrifice, seduction, bodily sensation, fantasies, dreams and plottings, metaphor, lies and fumbling truths, poetry, virginity, possession, semen, philosophy, loss, fading color, tristesse, pregnancy, heredity, clan power. It runs the gamut of meanings from mad obsession to basic biological lust to a fondness for delicacies as Ignatius J Reilly's love for the soft drink Dr Nut in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.

Part yogic philosopher, part early modern dance devotee - has all the best intentions.In her evening-length work "The Perfect Relationship," a concert of six duets that she presented last night at the Boston University Studio Dance Theatre, she and partner Jeffrey Polston convincingly slip under and over and through each other's various body parts, now smooth as corn silk, now all jagged puzzle pieces, struggling to connect or to snap loose. Abel's grappling with the subject of intimacy is heartfelt, and her technical know-how is solid, grounded in dance truths: relevés spiral from floor to ceiling; contractions of the gut reverberate in fingertips. But for a dance that's intended as a journey, you pass too much of the same scenery from point A to point B. With a few exceptions, you feel more like you're running in place than traveling the distance.

The structure of the piece could lead you to think otherwise. Abel has cracked "The Perfect Relationship" into discrete parts: What makes a relationship "perfect," she suggests, is not that it's "happy," but that its participants struggle - to know each other, to get close yet maintain boundaries - and grow.

The work begins, as do most couplings, with a honeymoon period ("A Dream of Unknowing"), and moves through stages of revelation ("The Naming"), trust ("The Reflecting Pool"), sexuality and flirtatiousness ("The Right Touch"), and spiritual bonding ("Shiva and Shakti"). It resolves, supposedly, with mature love ("I'll Meet You There"), interestingly - in a departure from its 1991 showing - complete with child (the remarkably attuned fifth-grader Miranda Degen-Portnoy). Musical interludes, ranging from the folky to the jazzy, offset the dancing, though their relationship to the dancing is not always clear; nor are the words to the songs. Still, it's refreshing to experience the live ensemble of six musicians and vocalists, directed by Abel's husband, Lee Perlman.

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Baku, Fineko/abc.az. A meeting with Georgy Duka, the president of Academy of Sciences of Moldova, took place yesterday in the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan (AMEA).

The AMEA press service informed that the meeting goal was expansion and dynamical development of scientific relations between Azerbaijan and Moldova, familiarizing with reforms conducted in the system of this country’s academy, its experience and success in this field.

“AMEA president Makhmud Kerimov said told of the necessity of goal-oriented reforms in this area and pointed out that bringing of Azerbaijani science up to the level answering to world development tendencies and international standards is an actual matter today,” it was reported.

Mr. Duka, in his turn, told of reforms in science and innovation process in Moldova and emphasized that in the country he represents this issue is one of the actual ones. He underlined that this problem first of all appear in case of insufficiency of financial resources demanding for scientific area and as a result it causes reduction of intensity of researches. Besides, there are such problems as obsolete and spoiling experimental basis, brain leakage, liquidation of industry science, non-purposeful spending of budget funds, etc.

The event was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan, HCM City People’s Committee Chairman Le Hoang Quan, Deputy Foreign Minister Vu Dung and Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism and President of the Vietnam Olympic Committee Nguyen Danh Thai.

Also present were Deputy Head of the 2008 Beijing Organising Board Li Binghua and Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Hu Qianwen.

The torch relay in Vietnam’s largest economic hub involved 60 people who are municipal leaders and sports managers, coaches and sports people with Olympic experiences, young talents and donors.

The parade marched on a 9-km road from the municipal Opera House through the heart of the city. At 20h 10’ the torch brightened the Military Zone 7 symposium to finish the relay.

Municipal People’s Committee Deputy Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Thu Ha said the Olympic torch relay, the first ever held in Vietnam, has contributed to strengthening and promoting traditional friendship between the Vietnamese and Chinese people.

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Couples that have a very good relationship are not just lucky. Successful, loving relationships do not just happen. The couples that have loving relationships are taking specific actions that people in unsuccessful relationships are not taking.

ACTION 1 - KINDNESS TO SELF AND OTHER

Think for a moment about how you go through your day. Are you focused on what you don’t like in yourself or your partner? Do you spend much of your thinking time judging yourself or your partner? Or, do you make the spiritual attribute of kindness to yourself and others, including your partner, your highest priority?

People in successful relationships treat themselves and their partner with kindness kind words, kind actions, kind looks, kind listening, and kind thoughts. It is far more important to them to be kind than to try to control their partner with anger, judgment, criticism, irritation, blame, resistance or withdrawal.

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“I just want a friend to talk to.”

“Friends, anyone?”

So begin dozens upon dozens of listings under the “strictly platonic” section of this region’s Craigslist, an online classifieds site. They read like singles’ ads (“Must love dogs,” “I’m loyal and intelligent...”), and the similarities to modern romance (and its evolution in the Internet age) don’t stop there. The prize these folks seek may be as elusive as true love: a good friend. Not virtual, but a live, flesh-and-blood best bud. They’re hoping the Web can help.

Few would argue that we, as a society, are desperate for connections; desperate to maintain and re-establish old ones, to make new ones. It doesn’t take much to “make” a friend in the virtual world. Just a few clicks of the mouse and you’ve added a new face to your friend cache.

About half of adults worldwide (and half of U.S. teens) who use the Web have made friends there, according to recently released findings of Norton Online Living Report, which polled about 9,000 Web users worldwide.

The report also found that about half of adult Internet users who’ve made online buddies say they like their online relationships “as much or more than friendships made offline.”

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You've just gone through the honeymoon phase of your new relationship and the other shoe's about to drop. Find out how you can navigate through arguments, spend some time apart and communicate to keep your bond strong. Most of all, learn how to make sure problems don't recur like a bad case of athlete's foot.

1- She doesn't (fully) trust you
She suspects that you eye every female in view. Why? Probably because you possess the sense of sight and as such, you notice the opposite sex. This, in turn, makes her jealous. While she may be partly right, she's mostly wrong. Sure you look at women, but only casually and briefly. After all, by checking out women, your hardwired-by-evolution male brain is just doing what it's programmed to do. This doesn't mean you actually want to pursue these women. Your lady needs to know and understand this.

What to do:
Invite her out with your buddies and show her that you only have eyes for her.

Another great way to show her that she's overreacting is to play the "do you think that guy/girl is cute?" game and show her that it's natural to notice attractive people. By making it an innocent act, you reduce this human instinct to its most unthreatening level...

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Here are some insights from leaders in the Intuit Leadership Development Organization about the importance of peer coaching relationships. I didn’t write about how to get started … but obviously we all know “peer coaching” happens all the time between close friends informally. I think it’s effective to make it formal … more to come.

What is peer coaching? (my crack at a definition) Peer coaching relationships are deep, personal connections you have with a few individuals (who face similar challenges as you do) with whom you can give and get earnest feedback.
Why is peer coaching important? More so than mentor-to-mentee relationships? Or leader-to-direct report relationships?

There are times when a relationship ends in separation or divorce. This can produce feelings of loneliness, anger, loss and disappointment. Research has shown that having a strong social support can prove invaluable, as can talking things out with a caring professional. Counselling can help deal with the emotional and practical issues that arise from separation and help you get on with your life.