Shankar, a three-time Grammy winner with legendary appearances at the 1967 Monterey Festival and at Woodstock, had been in fragile health for several years and last Thursday underwent surgery, his family said in a statement.

"Although it is a time for sorrow and sadness, it is also a time for all of us to give thanks and to be grateful that we were able to have him as a part of our lives," the family said. "He will live forever in our hearts and in his music."

In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office posted a Twitter message calling Shankar a "national treasure and global ambassador of India's cultural heritage."

"An era has passed away with ... Ravi Shankar. The nation joins me to pay tributes to his unsurpassable genius, his art and his humility," the Indian premier added.

Shankar had suffered from upper respiratory and heart issues over the past year and underwent heart-valve replacement surgery last week at a hospital in San Diego, south of Los Angeles.

The surgery was successful but he was unable to recover.

"Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the surgeons and doctors taking care of him, his body was not able to withstand the strain of the surgery. We were at his side when he passed away," his wife Sukanya and daughter Anoushka said.

Shankar lived in both India and the United States. He is also survived by his daughter, Grammy-winning singer Norah Jones, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Shankar performed his last concert with his daughter Anoushka on November 4 in Long Beach, California, the statement said. The night before he underwent surgery, he was nominated for a Grammy for his latest album "The Living Room Sessions, Part 1."

'NORWEGIAN WOOD' TO 'WEST MEETS EAST'

His family said that memorial plans will be announced at a later date and requested that donations be made to the Ravi Shankar Foundation.

Shankar is credited with popularizing Indian music through his work with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and The Beatles in the late 1960s, inspiring George Harrison to learn the sitar and the British band to record songs like "Norwegian Wood" (1965) and "Within You, Without You" (1967).

His friendship with Harrison led him to appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock pop festivals in the late 1960s, and the 1972 Concert for Bangladesh, becoming one of the first Indian musicians to become a household name in the West.

His influence in classical music, including on composer Philip Glass, was just as large. His work with Menuhin on their "West Meets East" albums in the 1960s and 1970s earned them a Grammy, and he wrote concertos for sitar and orchestra for both the London Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.

Shankar served as a member of the upper chamber of the Parliament of India, from 1986 to 1992, after being nominated by then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

A man of many talents, he also wrote the Oscar-nominated score for 1982 film "Gandhi," several books, and mounted theatrical productions.

He also built an ashram-style home and music center in India where students could live and learn, and later the Ravi Shankar Center in Delhi in 2001, which hosts an annual music festival.

Yet his first brush with the arts was through dance.

Born Robindra Shankar in 1920 in India's holiest city, Varanasi, he spent his first few years in relative poverty before his eldest brother took the family to Paris.

For about eight years, Shankar danced in his brother's Indian classical and folk dance troupe, which toured the world. But by the late 1930s he had turned his back on show business to learn the sitar and other classical Indian instruments.

Shankar earned multiple honors in his long career, including an Order of the British Empire (OBE) from Britain's Queen Elizabeth for services to music, the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, and the French Legion d'Honneur.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

The symptoms of auditory processing disorder, which affects the way the brain processes sound, are similar to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder short attention spans, anxiety and difficulty reading.

Chantal Kealey, an audiologist with the Canadian Association of Speech-language Pathologists and Audiologists, says not enough doctors are aware of the disorder.

Kealey and her organization have released a new set of national guidelines that urges doctors to take a more "holistic" approach.

They recommend ensuring teachers, parents and schools are making an effort to identify children with APD and where they are facing difficulties.

Kealey says children with the disorder are no less intelligent than other kids, they just learn differently differences she says can be treated once identified.

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Speaking of rough seas, its seems the IRS has gone and seized all of Lindsay Lohan's bank accounts so it can get the money she owes them. It's reported to be a pretty high sum, in the over $200,000 range, though I guess it's less now that Charlie Sheen bailed her out to the tune of $100,000. Still, that's a lotta scratch left to cover, and the IRS wants it, so they're gonna take it. Leaving Lohan in something of a panic, desperate to find another job and resume her life as the mysterious hunchback of the Chateau Marmont, dwelling high up by the rafters, rarely coming downstairs to be with the rest of the world, reviled and feared but also deeply wondered about. It's not a bad gig, actually, but it requires having a considerable amount of moola, and that is not what she's got. So let's get workin' on Liz & Dick 2: The Legend of Eddie Fisher's Gold. Or just put in her some other godawful TV movie. Anything to get her back in her dark suite, other guests hearing bangings and rattlings and moanings, but never glimpsing the strange source of all the mournful sounds. []

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Ha, another person having trouble with money is good old Justin Bieber. Well, he has plenty of money, plenty and then some, he just doesn't understand other things related to money. The silly kid was at Susan Sarandon's ping-pong club (that's a thing that has existed for some time now, and yet is still surprising every time I read about or type it), sitting in a back room with a bunch of friends, until management came in and said they had to clear out. When asked why, management informed them that J.P. Morgan was having a private party in the room. To which Biebs said, "Why does he get the room and not us?" Ha. So the funny part is that he thought J.P. Morgan was a person who was having a party instead of a big scary bank. Teehee, silly Canadian teenager, doesn't know about things like J.P. Morgan. Though, maybe Bieber did know what he was talking about. He's a spiritual kid, maybe he simply thought that the ghost of J.P. Morgan had come to enjoy Susan Sarandon's ping pong club, and he didn't think it fair that some grubby old ghost got the room instead of him. Maybe he really did think that ol' John Pierpont was going to walk in there, wearing his ghostly waistcoat and top hat, waving his cane at people. And if that was the case, then Bieber had a point. Why should that mean dumb ghost get preference? He's been getting preference for almost two hundred years now. It's time for someone else to get a taste of the privileged life. Stop playing ping pong, ghosts, and ruining a little boy's night. It's just not nice. []

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Oh, brother. Or, oh, step-mother. Real Housewives of Beverly Hills "star" (gotta use that word loosely around her) Brandi Glanville is all mad at her ex-husband Eddie Cibrian's current wife, country singer LeAnn Rimes. She's mad for a variety of reasons, but right now she's particularly angry because Rimes was tweeting about Glanville's two sons, calling them "my boys" and talking about how she loves spending time with her family. Glanville was quick to point out that "They are my boys, Eddie's boys and your stepsons... for now." Ooh, sick burn. And also accurate, as far as the family tree goes. Glanville thinks that Rimes was deliberately trying to make her angry on Twitter, and it looks as though she willingly took the bait. Rimes ignored the responses and instead continued to trill on about how much love she has in her life and all that. So, really, the good part of this story is that the boys do nothing but win here, huh? Yeah, they've got step-mom pimping them out on Twitter to make their real mom upset, and then they've got their real mom, a human adult lady, trying to get in fights on Twitter and playing the "Mine!" game. Really, those kids are in great shape either way, aren't they? Where, meanwhile, is Eddie Cibrian on this? Well, he at least doesn't appear to be on Twitter. Doesn't mean he's with the kids necessarily he's no saint in this situation, either, remember, but he's at least not going online to complain about things. There is at least that. []

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Spinning further down the drain, we move to Angelina "Trash Bags" Pivarnick, the girl from the first season of Jersey Shore who left the show because she didn't want to work at the T-shirt store they were supposed to work at and then had to sit back and watch all her former castmates become famous and rich beyond measure. Then she tried to come back to the show, and did for a little part of the second season or something, but she was quickly off again. Now she's trying to sue MTV, claiming they're blocking her from getting other work by editing her badly on the show and not letting her go to MTV functions (ha). The news today is that she tried to hire celebrity attorney Gloria Allred to represent her, but Allred said no. So, things are not going well for poor Trash Bags, though, really, what does she want? She quit the show three episodes into the first season because she didn't want to work a shift at some dumb job. Fine, OK. And then MTV let her come back for season two, for which she made well over a hundred thousand dollars before leaving again. I feel like she's benefited from this show plenty, considering her time put in. And she was on Couples Therapy this year, so she is getting other "work." Look, you don't want to work at the T-shirt shop, fine. Quit the T-shirt shop and move out of the house. But then don't go complaining when everyone else who worked at the T-shirt shop made millions of dollars because the T-shirt shop exploded and became the most popular T-shirt shop in the world. Them's the breaks. The world is full of consequences, everything there is is a consequence of something else, and one of those consequences is that you don't get to reap the T-shirt shop riches if you quit the T-shirt shop. That's all. I'm sorry, Angelina, I can only imagine the ocean of bitter regret that seethes within you always, but you gotta reconcile yourself with a decision you made years ago. I know that guy never should gotten dumped from the E Street Band. I've heard tales of that other Beatle. But they eventually moved on with their lives, and you need to, too. Gloria Allred isn't going to fix your problems. And she never will. []

2. More data with which to make its products better: Google Maps is every marketer's dream. Mapping software gives them invaluable consumer data to work with, like the city you live in, the stores you shop at, the restaurants you frequent, where you get your coffee, and much, much more. "Google needs the traffic that iOS users bring," . Those millions of iPhone owners unknowingly feed Google the analytics it needs to make Google Maps the superior, celebrated product it's become. The same goes for Chrome. And Gmail.

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Ibaka was involved in a confrontation with Los Angeles Lakers forward Metta World Peace on Friday which led Jackson, a friend of Peace's, to issue a threat to Ibaka on the social networking website.

The San Antonio Spurs said they supported the punishment.

"The recent public comments made by Stephen Jackson are absolutely unacceptable, cannot be tolerated and do not reflect the standards held by the San Antonio Spurs," General Manager RC Buford told the team's website.

Jackson has a history of coming to the aid of Peace, most famously in the 2004-05 season when the then Indiana team mates were involved in a brawl with fans in Detroit.

Jackson received a 30-game suspension for that incident while Peace, then known as Ron Artest, was banned for the rest of the season. (Writing by Jahmal Corner in Los Angeles. Editing by Patrick Johnston)

Analysts had expected a 0.1 percent rise in the new housing price index.

Prices for new homes in the Toronto-Oshawa metropolitan region, which accounts for 26.6 percent of the entire Canadian market, rose by 0.3 percent in the month and were up 4.9 percent on the year.

The second highest year-on-year increase was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where prices climbed 3.9 percent in the period.

Overall, new housing prices rose in eight of the metropolitan areas surveyed in October, were unchanged in eleven and down in two areas.

Prices in October increased by 2.4 percent from October 2011.

The Canadian government, which imposed tighter mortgage rules in July, and the Bank of Canada have long expressed concerns the housing market might overheat. Ottawa says it is too soon to judge the full effect of the new rules.

The new housing price index excludes condominiums, which the government says are a particular cause for concern.

(Reporting by Louise Egan and Alex Paterson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

The property of an anonymous American collector is being offered by Profiles in History in an online and phone auction on Dec. 18.

Among the highlights is a two-page letter from Washington to an Anglican clergyman.

Another top item is a signed van Gogh letter, written in 1890, to Joseph and Marie Ginoux, who were proprietors of the Cafe de la Gare in Arles, France, where the Dutch post-impressionist artist lived for a time.

Each of those letters is estimated to bring $200,000 to $300,000.

A handwritten letter from John Lennon to Eric Clapton has a pre-sale estimate of $20,000 to $30,000.

The collection will be exhibited Dec. 3-9 at Douglas Elliman's Madison Avenue art gallery.

Washington's letter was written on Aug. 15, 1798, to the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, amid an undeclared naval war with France. Washington thanks Boucher for sending him his "View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution," a book of 13 discourses Boucher preached.

"Peace, with all the world is my sincere wish, I am sure it is our true policy and am persuaded it is the ardent desire of the Government," the former president and Founding Father wrote.

In a Jan. 20, 1890, four-page letter, handwritten in French to his friends Monsieur and Madame Ginoux, van Gogh wishes the ailing proprietress a speedy recovery.

"Illnesses are there to make us remember again that we are not made of wood," the artist wrote. "That's what seems the good side of all this to me. Then afterwards one goes back to one's everyday work less fearful of the annoyances, with a new store of serenity." Van Gogh died less than seven months later.

He suffered from acute anxiety and bouts of depression throughout his life. Madame Ginoux and the cafe were frequent subjects of his work.

The eight-page letter from Lennon is a draft he wrote to Clapton on Sept. 29, 1971, and signed "John and Yoko." The whereabouts of the final version is unknown.

Lennon writes candidly about his admiration for the great British guitarist and suggests forming a "'nucleus' group (Plastic Ono Band) . and of course had YOU!!! In mind as soon as we decided." He writes that drummer Jim Kelnter, artist Klaus Voormann, pianist Nicky Hopkins and producer Phil Spector "all agreed so far" to join.

"Anyway, the point is, after missing the Bangla-Desh concert, we began to feel more and more like going on the road, but not the way I used with the Beatles night after night of torture. We mean to enjoy ourselves, take it easy, and maybe even see some of the places we go to! We have many 'revolutionary' ideas for presenting shows that completely involve the audience ."

Other luminaries whose papers will be sold include Lou Gehrig, Louis Pasteur, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Giuseppe Verdi, Peter Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, King Henry II and Napoleon I.

The December auction is the first of several sales that will be held over two years. The entire collection contains 3,000 items.

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Online:

Information on how to bid is available on www.profilesinhistory.com.