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Nadine Gordimer, a Nobel Prize-winning author famed for her portrayals of South Africa under apartheid, died Monday, her family said in a statement. She was 90.

Gordimer was considered a modern literary genius, an important chronicler of the injustices of racial segregation along with other white writers such as Athol Fugard and J.M. Coetzee.

"Her proudest days were not only when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991," her family said in the statement, "but also when she testified at the Delmas Trial in 1986, to contribute to saving the lives of 22 [African National Congress] members, all of them accused of treason."

Gordimer became active in the African National Congress — which was then banned but is now South Africa's ruling party — after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960s, in which dozens were killed. Three of Gordimer's books were banned during apartheid.

"They showed how people were living here," Gordimer said in an NPR interview last year. "They showed what influences were shaping our lives. And they showed the many different reactions to it among different people here."

Gordimer was one of the first people activist Nelson Mandela wanted to see upon his release from prison in 1990. A copy of her 1979 novel Burger's Daughter, which explored the family life of the children of revolutionaries, had been smuggled into his hands while he was imprisoned.

When they first met in the 1960s, she recalled in a 2009 interview, "We talked politics, of course. What else would we talk about?"

But she recalled in a New Yorker essay published upon Mandela's death last year that when they met a few days after his release from prison, he wanted to talk not about politics but his discovery that his wife had cheated on him.

This reflected in a way Gordimer's fiction, in which politics were always present but the personal was never forgotten. In 1981's July's People, a white family flees an armed rebellion, ending up increasingly reliant on a boy who had been their servant, turning the power relationship between white and black on its head.

As reviewer Maureen Corrigan noted of Gordimer's 2012 novel No Time Like the Present on NPR's Fresh Air, Gordimer's characters continued to grapple with politics after the end of apartheid, but found the country had become "much more morally ambiguous."

"Human beings must live in the world of ideas," Gordimer said in an interview with The Paris Review 35 years ago. "This dimension in the human psyche is very important."

Gordimer was born in 1923 in South Africa of immigrant Jewish parents, her mother English and her father a Lithuanian who had fled the pogroms of his home country. She began writing early and published her first short story when she was 15.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Germany midfielder Christoph Kramer's head injury in the World Cup final has revived concern about the way football deals with concussion.

Kramer continued playing for 14 minutes Sunday after taking a heavy blow to the face in a collision with Argentina defender Ezequiel Garay.

The 23-year-old Kramer was replaced in the 31st minute after slumping to the ground.

He appeared to be disorientated when helped off the field by medical staff.

Argentina players Javier Mascherano and Pablo Zabaleta played on in the semifinal against the Netherlands after sustaining head injuries. Both players started in the final.

Questions about FIFA's concussion protocol were first raised in the group stage when Uruguay defender Alvaro Pereira refused to leave the field after being struck in the head by an England opponent's knee.

CHICAGO (AP) — The song says a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, but a study says that kind of imprecise measurement can lead to potentially dangerous dosing mistakes.

The results, published online Monday in Pediatrics, underscore recommendations that droppers and syringes that measure in milliliters be used for liquid medicines — not spoons.

The study involved nearly 300 parents, mostly Hispanics, with children younger than 9 years old. The youngsters were treated for various illnesses at two New York City emergency rooms and sent home with prescriptions for liquid medicines, mostly antibiotics.

Parents were contacted afterward and asked by phone how they had measured the prescribed doses. They also brought their measuring devices to the researchers' offices to demonstrate doses they'd given their kids.

Parents who used spoonfuls "were 50% more likely to give their children incorrect doses than those who measured in more precise milliliter units," said Dr. Alan Mendelsohn, a co-author and associate professor at New York University's medical school.

Incorrect doses included giving too much and too little, which can both be dangerous, he said. Underdosing may not adequately treat an illness and can lead to medication-resistant infections, while overdoses may cause illness or side effects that can be life-threatening. The study doesn't include information on any ill effects from dosing mistakes.

Almost one-third of the parents gave the wrong dose and 1 in 6 used a kitchen spoon rather than a device like an oral syringe or dropper that lists doses in milliliters.

Less than half the prescriptions specified doses in milliliters. But even when they did, the medicine bottle label often listed doses in teaspoons. Parents often assume that means any similar-sized kitchen spoon, the authors said.

"Outreach to pharmacists and other health professionals is needed to promote the consistent use of milliliter units between prescriptions and bottle labels," the authors said.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

FDA: http://tinyurl.com/oc3bnlk

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Maybe "Bad Judge" is the wrong title.

She's actually a very good judge. Off the job, she's somewhat of a bad girl.

Played by Kate Walsh on this upcoming NBC sitcom, Judge Rebecca Wright is a clear break from the cool, polished Dr. Addison Montgomery she played for eight seasons on "Grey's Anatomy" and its spinoff, "Private Practice."

"She's a party girl," Walsh said, "and she happens to be really, really good at her job."

On a panel Sunday at the summer TV critics' meeting, Walsh argued that Wright's riotously let-her-hair-down style whenever she's off the bench is, in part, just her form of release from the pressures of her job.

She's the kind of woman "that we love to watch do things that we don't necessarily think the people in their position should do," added executive producer Anne Heche (who doesn't appear in the show).

"If I could, I would prefer 'Bad-Ass Judge,'" joked fellow executive producer Liz Brixius (whose credits include Showtime's "Nurse Jackie," which stars Edie Falco as a "bad" nurse).

Walsh recalled TV's beloved Dr. Gregory House, a world-class physician with a tangled private life: "You were never waiting for that guy to get married and have kids. 'I just wish he would settle down' — you never had that wish for him!"

Walsh seeks equal justice from viewers for her freewheeling female judge.

"Bad Judge" premieres Oct. 2.

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Contact Frazier Moore at http://twitter.com/tvfrazier