Rothkowitz, Edward S. Film editor and producer, A.C.E., died at home in Playa Del Rey on April 1st.

He had a long career in film and television but was best known as the editor and co-producer of the legendary rock n roll documentary about The Who entitled "The Kids Are Alright."

Mr. Rothkowitz grew up in Bronx, New York and served in the United States military as a Marine. He entered the film industry when editing was still done by physically cutting film on Moviolas, and apprentices paid their dues by filling film trims in canvas bins. Mr. Rothkowitz was the assistant editor of "Midnight Cowboy" and went on to make his career in network television, becoming a key member of David E. Kelley's creative team on such landmark dramas as "Picket Fences" and "Chicago Hope". His many other television credits include "Everwood", "Going to California", "Temptation Island", "Cupid" and "The Young Riders". Mr. Rothkowitz also directed his energy and talents to producing, notably, the award winning, "Tis the Season, A Hawiian Christmas Story". Most recently, Mr. Rothkowitz focused on passing his significant knowledge of film craft to the next generation. He was proud to be involved with ArtShare and the Inside Out programs to teach filmmaking to at-risk youth. Mr. Rothkowitz is survived by his wife, Sarah Campbell, son, Jason, stepdaughter, three grandchildren and a younger brother. Private memorial, the family requests that donations be made to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Published in the Los Angeles Times on 4/9/2006.

ROME - Dame Muriel Spark, whose spare and humorous novels made her one of the most admired British writers of the post World War II years, has died in Tuscany, Italian officials said Saturday. She was 88.

Spark died Thursday in a hospital in Florence, said Massimiliano Dindalini, the mayor of the Tuscan village of Civitella della Chiana, where Spark had lived for almost three decades.

Spark wrote more than 20 novels, including "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," which was later adapted for a Broadway hit and a movie.

She had lived in Italy since the late 1960s, first in Rome and later in a converted 13th-century church in Tuscany with her friend of many years, painter and sculptor Penelope Jardine.

But she retained the accent of her birth and youth in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she attended James Gillespie's High School for Girls and was taught by the prototype for her most famous character — Miss Jean Brodie.

While that 1961 book made her famous internationally, she already had written seven novels, three volumes of poetry and had been producing respected biographical and critical work about the Bronte family.

"The Girls of Slender Means," considered by many to be her best novel, was published in 1963, drawing on her experience as a young woman struggling to make ends meet while writing in London.

"I was literally starving," she once said. "It was awful. I had nothing to eat."

Novelist Graham Greene gave her a monthly allowance and some wine when she was poverty-stricken, on condition that she did not thank him or pray for him.

Like Greene and Evelyn Waugh, Spark was a Catholic convert and dealt with questions of morality and metaphysics, directly or indirectly, in her fiction.

"I don't propagate the Catholic faith but in a funny sort of way, my books couldn't be written by anyone except a Catholic," she told the Sunday Telegraph in 1997.

Although her father was a Scottish Jew and her mother an English Anglican, she said she was always a Catholic at heart.

"It's the only religion I view as rational — it helps you get rid of all the other problems in your life," she told the newspaper. "There really is such a thing as beauty of morals."

Spark didn't preach, however.

"I don't like messages in novels. I don't like them being used as a propaganda machine, although what drives a novelist to deal with such situations is to improve the human race's understanding of itself," she told The Sunday Times in 1996.

Most of Spark's novels are short and spare, with the plots often bizarre or macabre, satirical or darkly humorous.

In "The Driver's Seat" (1970), the main character searches for someone to murder her. "The Abbess of Crewe," a 1974 satire written after the Watergate scandal, is about the political machinations in an ecclesiastical community.

Born Muriel Sarah Camberg in Edinburgh in 1918, Spark was married at 19 to Sidney Oswald Spark, a teacher, and had a son, Robin.

They settled in Rhodesia — now Zimbabwe — but divorced after six years.

Muriel Spark returned to London in 1944 and worked in intelligence for the Foreign Office before entering the literary world as a publisher's copy editor, poet and literary critic.

She was general secretary of The Poetry Society and editor of The Poetry Review from 1947 to 1949.

Her first novel, "The Comforters" in 1957, was a critical success. After a few more books, she moved to New York to get away from London literary circles.

After "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" became a hit on Broadway in 1966, she moved to Italy to get away from the literati in New York.

She found it useful to be an expatriate.

"Being at an angle I find a help," she told the Sunday Times. "It means one has a different perspective, a new angle of absurdity.

Spark had quirky writing habits. She wrote longhand, with little if any revision, in spiral-bound notebooks she got from a stationer in Edinburgh. She never used a pen anyone else had touched.

She was made a dame in 1993, the female equivalent of a knight. In 1963, she became a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature, and in 1978 an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She received the David Cohen Literature Prize for lifetime achievement in 1997.

Among Spark's poetic works are 1952's "The Fanfarlo and Other Verse" and 1982's "Going up to Sotheby's and other poems."

Some of her other well-known novels are "Memento Mori," "The Ballad of Peckham Rye," "The Mandelbaum Gate," which won Britain's James Tait Black Memorial Prize, "Loitering with Intent" and "A Far Cry from Kensington."

Spark is survived by her son. A funeral was scheduled in Civitella della Chiana later Saturday, the mayor said.

WEST NEW YORK, N.J. (AP) - Morton Freedgood, a best-selling author who
wrote "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three'' and many other detective
and mystery novels under the pen name John Godey, has died. He was 93.

Freedgood's daughter, Laura, told The Record of Bergen County that he
died Sunday at his home in West New York. The cause of death was not
disclosed.

His novel, "The Wall-to-Wall Trap,'' was published under his own name
in 1957, but Laura Freedgood said her father decided to use the pen
name John Godey - borrowed from the name of a ladies publication of the
1880s - to differentiate that work from his serious literature.

As John Godey, he later achieved commercial success with the books "A
Thrill a Minute with Jack Albany,'' "Never Put Off till Tomorrow What
You Can Kill Today'' and "The Three Worlds of Johnny Handsome.'' Then,
in 1973, he reached best seller lists for many weeks with "The Taking
of Pelham One Two Three,'' a story about the hijacking of a New York
City subway train that was made into a movie the following year
starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw.

Never read the book, but the movie was very amusing. I don't know if he wrote this or a screenwriter, but my favorite part was this:

Deputy Mayor: All right, Al. You've heard from the Three Wise Men. Now what do you say?

Mayor: What are THEY going to say, Warren?

Deputy Mayor: They who?

Mayor: Who? Everybody - the press, the man on the street.

Deputy Mayor: You know what they're going to say. The Times is going to support you. The News is going to knock you. The Post will take both sides at the same time. The rich will support you, likewise the blacks and the Puerto Ricans won't give a shit. So come on, Al, quit stalling!

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/Bi...-dfrc-p021.html

CNN's reporting that Scott Crossfield's body was found in the wreckage of his plane.

(AP) Legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield, the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound, was found dead Thursday in the wreckage of a single-engine plane in the mountains of northern Georgia, his son-in-law said.

Searchers discovered the wreckage of a small plane about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta, but the Civil Air Patrol didn't immediately identify the body inside.

Ed Fleming, Crossfield's son-in-law, told The Associated Press from Crossfield's home in Herndon, Va., that family had been told it was Crossfield.

Crossfield's Cessna was last spotted in the same area on Wednesday while on flight from Alabama to Virginia. There were thunderstorms in the area when officials lost radar and radio contact with the plane at 11:15 a.m., said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Crossfield, 84, had been one of a group of civilian pilots assembled by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA, in the early 1950s.

Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager had already broken the speed of sound in his history-making flight in 1947. But Crossfield set the Mach 2 record — twice the speed of sound — in 1953, when he reached 1,300 mph in NACA's Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket.

In 1960, Crossfield reached Mach 2.97 in an X-15 rocket plane launched from a B-52 bomber. The plane reached an altitude of 81,000 feet. At the time, Crossfield was working as a pilot and design consultant for North American Aviation, which made the X-15. He later worked as an executive for Eastern Airlines and Hawker Siddley Aviation.

More recently, Crossfield had a key role in preparations for the attempt to re-enact the Wright brothers' flight on the 100th anniversary of their feat near Kitty Hawk, N.C. He trained four pilots for the Dec. 17, 2003, flight attempt in a replica of the brothers' flyer, but poor weather prevented the take-off.

Among his many honors, Crossfield was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1983.

On Wednesday, his plane had left Prattville, Ala., around 9 a.m. en route to Manassas, Va., not far from his home.

He was played by Scott Wilson in The Right Stuff

Dennis Duggan, the legendary New York newspaperman and Newsday columnist who wrote about the city he loved for more than five decades, died this morning at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. He was 78.

Duggan, who lived in Greenwich Village, joined Newsday in 1967 as a financial reporter and has held the posts of financial editor, New York Bureau Chief, and City Hall Bureau Chief. He became a columnist in 1985. He has also worked at the New York Daily Mirror, The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and is believed to be the last writer on a city paper to have worked at the long-defunct New York Herald Tribune.

In an message to the staff, Newsday editor John Mancini yesterday called Duggan "the last of the breed of shoe-leather columnists whose lyrical vision lured so many of us into the business. That said, he was without a doubt the only Newsday employee ever to list "Fran Tarkenton, N.Y. Giants," and "Truman Capote, N.Y. writer," as persons to be notified in case of an emergency. Our sympathies are with Mary Elizabeth and Dennis's loved ones. We'll keep you informed on arrangements, but in the meantime I'm sure he wouldn't mind you raising a glass to him tonight."

MIAMI — Miami Heat Coach Pat Riley left the team on Friday, following the death of his 96-year-old mother.

Riley, who spent four days earlier this week in upstate New York with his mother, was with the Heat for its practice on Friday morning.

The team said he would return in time for Game 1 of Miami's Eastern Conference quarterfinal with Chicago on Saturday.

(AGI) - Roma, April 22 - The Roman actress Alida Valli died this morning
at home in Rome. Born in Pola in 1921, her original name being Alida
Maria Altenburger, Alida Valli became a real icon of Italian cinema and
appeared in such films as "The Paradine Case" by Hitchcock, "The Third
Man", "The Innocents", "Oedipus Rex" by Pasolini and "Strategy of the
Spider" by Bertolucci. On the wishes of Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni,
the service will be carried out at city hall on Monday morning. In the
afternoon the actress will be commemorated, again at city hall, in the
presence of the highest state dignitaries. (AGI) .

You beat out imdb, Tony.

I didn't know she was still alive. Check out The Third Man where she gives the coldest snub in film history.

I only noticed while counting down the -1950 poll that she was still alive. RIP.

'Dog Day's' journey into legend

Robber, lover gone, but the flick is back
By CELESTE KATZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


A special anniversary edition of Al Pacino's classic 1975 film "Dog Day
Afternoon" is out on shelves - but the man who inspired the movie by
sticking up a Brooklyn bank to pay for his lover's sex change isn't
around to see it.

John Wojtowicz died a few months ago, with little mention, after cancer
ravaged his body.


His fragile, elderly mother, Theresa, brought him from the hospital to
their Flatbush apartment in December, and he spent his final few days
delirious, dying on Jan. 2, just short of his 61st birthday.


"He wasn't mean or anything - he was very, very good to me," Theresa
told the Daily News. "I feel God took him and I didn't want to see him
suffer like that ...He suffered pretty bad, you know. I hope he's
resting now."


At 2:50 p.m. on Aug. 22, 1972, Wojtowicz walked into a Chase Manhattan
bank on Avenue P and E. Third St. with a rifle and held the employees
hostage as he scrounged for cash to buy a sex-change operation for his
male "wife."


The bizarre 13-hour standoff with cops saw thousands of cheering
spectators gather outside the bank as Wojtowicz gave freewheeling news
interviews by phone, took a pizza delivery and then boarded a limousine
with his partner, Sal Naturale, and several hostages in a failed bid to
escape.


Wojtowicz was finally apprehended at Kennedy Airport. Naturale was shot
and killed by an FBI agent. A third accomplice took off before the
heist got underway. None of the hostages were hurt.


The bungling Brooklyn bandit, who went by the nickname Little John, was
sentenced to up to 20 years in federal prison. After his release, he
was rearrested for violating parole.


His ex-wife, Carmen Bifulco, now lives in a Canarsie apartment with her
boyfriend, two cats and a vintage cookie jar collection. At 58, she's a
great-grandmother and spent 25 years working as an educator.


Bifulco wept when she heard about Wojtowicz's death from The News, but
her life with him - which resulted in two kids and a divorce - was
never, ever easy, she said.


"He made me not trust men - not trust anybody, really," she said.
"He's the father of my kids and everything...But he wasn't a nice
person."


The pair began dating after they met in March 1966 on a ski trip. He
was demanding and bossy from the start: "'I'm The Boss, do what I
say,'" was his refrain, she said. "I thought it was cute. Boy, was I
wrong."


Bifulco wasn't the "wife" Wojtowicz was thinking of inside the
sweltering bank. His mind was on Ernest Aron, the male lover he'd
married in a church ceremony. Amid the standoff, cops brought Aron to
the bank straight from the Bellevue Hospital psych ward he'd occupied
since trying to kill himself.


Aron ultimately had his sex change - partly paid for with money
Wojtowicz got from selling the rights to his story. Aron became Liz
Debbie Eden and died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987.


Bifulco appeared in "Based on a True Story," a 2005 Dutch documentary
about Wojtowicz and the holdup. But Wojtowicz never granted an
interview. Instead, the film is laced with recorded phone calls in
which the failed robber - who insists on being addressed as "The Dog"
- demands thousands of dollars for his precious time.


The couple's daughter, Dawn Wojtowicz, 37, remained somewhat close to
her father after his release from prison. Although she knew about the
robbery and her dad's motivation for it, "I tried to stay away from
that scene and just know my father for who he was," she said.


Dawn laments that her father was cremated, not buried with the honors
he wanted after serving with the Army in Vietnam. "He wanted to have
the military funeral," she said. "He wanted them to fold the flag and
give it to me."


One of Wojtowicz's bank hostages, Josephine Tutino, said she was
terrified during the ordeal, but bears her captor no ill will. "I'm a
Christian, and I believe in forgiveness," said Tutino, 76. "I believe
he was young and he was all mixed up. These kind of people who do these
things - they can't have it all together."


"He didn't change. You would think he might have repented, but I guess
that was his whole life," she said. "He paid a high price for that."


My little chat with Little John


By BOB KAPPSTATTER
DAILY NEWS BRONX BUREAU CHIEF


There we were. Two o'clock in the morning, outside the front door of a
flood-lit bank in Brooklyn, surrounded by scores of cops, FBI agents
and a crowd of thousands.


Several police snipers - I was nervously sure - were keeping the
man standing next to me in their cross hairs.


"So. Howya doin'?" I asked Little John, trying to keep it low key.


"Howda you think?" he answered, jaw clenched, eyes darting all about
with a rifle slung over his shoulder and eight hostages, along with his
partner Sal, inside.


I had been called over as "a neutral media observer" by Bob Morse, the
U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, whose office I had covered.


Morse was trying to cut a deal with Little John, promising him no
federal prosecution if he and Sal surrendered. But Little John promptly
turned it down, since it still left him open to state charges. Our
little meeting ended there. He went back in the bank and I stayed on
the story.


Earlier that evening, I had taken a chance, phoning the bank to see if
the hostage takers would pick up the phone. Surprise. Little John
answered. A short while later, the desk sent me to the scene and our
encounter began.


All these years later, I don't remember most of the details, except him
saying the air conditioning had been turned off and the hostages were
suffering.


We met again six years later when I interviewed Little John, fresh out
of federal prison. He was working as a bookkeeper for a nonprofit that
helped gays, addicts and others. He gave the movie version of his
botched holdup a 30% reality rating.


I asked him if he'd learned anything from the whole affair.


"Yeah," he answered. "Don't rob a bank."

Phil Walden, mentor of Otis Redding, Allman Brothers, dies


ATLANTA The founder of Capricorn Records who launched the careers of artists including Otis Redding and the Allman Brothers Band has died.

Phil Walden died yesterday at his home in Atlanta. A business associate of the family said today that Walden died after a long battle with cancer.

He was 66 years old.

Walden's Macon-based record label was influential in creating the Southern rock sound of the 1970s. He also promoted groups including the Charlie Daniels Band and Wet Willie over a career that spanned more than three decades.

Walden died at 10:30 p-m yesterday.

Leon Jones -- a law partner of Walden's son, Philip Walden Junior -- says Walden had been receiving medical care at home.

HELSINKI (AFP) - The Finnish composer Erik Valdemar Bergman, famous for
his 12-tone (dodecaphonic) works and compositions for choirs, has died
in Helsinki aged 94, the STT news agency reported Monday.

Bergman, who died during the night of Sunday, was a leading figure in
Finnish modernism and began in 1950 his studies of dodecaphonic music,
the father of which was Arnold Schoenberg.

A Swedish-speaker, he was born on November 24, 1911 in Nykarleby in the
west of Finland and studied at Helsinki University and then the
Sibelius Academy, from which he graduated in 1938.

He studied in Berlin, Vienna and Switzerland where he was a pupil of
Vladimir Vogel. In 1957 he produced his first overtly dodecaphonic
work, "Tre aspetti d'una serie dodecafonica".

From 1963 to 1976 he taught composition at the Sibelius Academy.

He was a constant traveller, visiting Europe, the countries of the
Mediterranean and the east in search of new basic material.

His interest in song was already apparent in the 1950s with "Rubaiyat"
(1953) and reached a peak with his first opera "Det sjungande tradet"
(The Singing Tree, 1986-88), staged by the Finnish national Opera in
1995.

His final work, "Fantasia", a piece of trumpet and orchestra, was
played in October 2004 by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Oooh, Bergman's choral work is great for breaking leases. Crank that up to 11 and just watch the super twitch.

JACKSON, Miss. - Florence Mars, whose book about the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers won praise from many but made her the target of the Ku Klux Klan, has died, a relative said Monday. She was 84.

Mars suffered from Bell's palsy and other ailments and died Sunday, said her godson, Mark Howell.

Mars was one of the few residents of rural Philadelphia, Miss., to cooperate with FBI agents who investigated the disappearance of three civil rights workers during the Freedom Summer in 1964.

Her book, "Witness in Philadelphia," was published in 1977 and chronicled the turbulent struggle to register black voters and the brutal slayings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

The men were detained on a traffic violation in 1964 after investigating the burning of a black church. The Klan ambushed them when they were released from the Neshoba County Jail a few hours later. They were beaten and shot and their bodies buried in an earthen dam.

The killings inspired the 1988 film "Mississippi Burning" and were the center of the highly publicized trial of a former Klan leader last year.

"She had guts enough to stand up against the Klan, which few people would do," said longtime friend Gerald "Boots" Howell.

Howell, 84, said the Klan set fire to Mars' barn in the late 1960s after she publicly supported the civil rights movement. Howell and his wife, Millie, were among Mars' few lifelong friends in a town that often ostracized whites who supported the equal rights movement.

Edgar Ray Killen, a former Klansman and part-time preacher, was convicted of manslaughter last year for orchestrating the slayings.

His conviction on June 1 came exactly 41 years to the day that the men were killed. Killen, 81, was sentenced to 60 years and is in a central Mississippi prison.

Killen had been tried along with several other men in 1967 on federal charges of violating the victims' civil rights, but the jury deadlocked. Seven others were convicted, but none served more than six years.

McALLEN, Texas (AP) - Daniel McKenna, a former guitarist for the band
Toby Beau, was found dead in his home, apparently a victime of suicide,
police said.

McKenna, 54, died Wdenesday. He was one of the original members of the
band, which had a hit in 1978 with "My Angel Baby."

"He was a phenomenal guitarist," Art Mendoza, a former Toby Beau band
member, said in a story in Thursday's editions of The (McAllen)
Monitor.

Mendoza said he first heard McKenna play at a club near the McAllen
airport with a band called the American Ice Cream Revolution.

Mendoza said McKenna loved to fish. "That's what I remember more than
anything," he said.

Toby Beau was the name of one of the last original wooden shrimp boats
docked in Port Isabel, the newspaper reported.

Ex-Air Force One commander, 88, dies
Cocoa Beach resident flew for JFK, LBJ

BY JUAN ORTEGA
FLORIDA TODAY

Reserved, patriotic and seeing it as his devout duty, he flew presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as Air Force One's aircraft commander.

But he probably wouldn't have told you that or that he flew missions between China and Burma during World War II.

The Cocoa Beach resident probably would've told you that he was happily married to his high school sweetheart, Emily Swindal, for 70 years and that he's proud of his family.

Retired Air Force Col. James B. Swindal died Tuesday at Cape Canaveral Hospital. He was 88.

"Jim Swindal will always be a hero to me," said Cecil Stoughton of Merritt Island, who served as an in-house White House photographer. "He was soft-spoken and self-effacing."

Swindal was born Aug. 18, 1917, in West Blocton, Ala., the son of the late Samuel and Miranda Swindal.

He worked as a crane operator at a cast iron pipe shop in Birmingham, Ala., when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, which prompted him to enlist in the Army in 1942, said his 68-year-old son, James Swindal. He was selected as a flying cadet in the Air Corps.

Years later, Swindal served during Kennedy's administration, including on Nov. 22, 1963, when the president was assassinated. Kennedy had appointed Swindal to colonel a year earlier.

"The day of the assassination was one of the closest I got to Jim, when the president passed away," said Stoughton, who did not have a designated seat on the plane that day.

"Jim said, 'If all the seats are taken you could ride up here with us,' " Stoughton recalled. "Obviously, he was a take-charge guy. He knew that my job was important, as was his."

Swindal considered the flight from Dallas to Washington, D.C., after Kennedy was assassinated, his most difficult. Room was cleared in the back of the Boeing 707 to return Kennedy home in a coffin.

Swindal also served during part of the Johnson administration. Swindal had impressed the Texan by landing a Boeing 707 on a grass strip on a ranch, his grandson, Jonathan, recalled.

After Swindal retired, he refused to fly, opting to drive with his wife across the country in a Cadillac, in the sunshine, visiting military bases and golf courses, said one of his grandsons, 33-year-old Jonathan Swindal.

"After he stopped flying Air Force One, he would not fly on an airplane, because if he's not in charge, he didn't want anything to do with it," Jonathan Swindal said.

He is survived by his wife; daughter, Kathryn Swindal of Leesburg, Va.; son, James L. Swindal of East Hampton, Conn.; grandsons J. Christian Swindal and Jonathan Swindal, both of Connecticut; and great-grandson, Mason Swindal of Connecticut.

Calling hours for James B. Swindal will be from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Friday at Beckman-Williamson Funeral Home in Cocoa Beach.

No date has been announced for services and interment, but they will be at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Julia Thorne, an author and the former wife of U.S. Sen. John Kerry, has died of cancer at a friend's home in Concord. She was 61.

Thorne, who died Thursday, wrote the 1993 book, "You Are Not Alone: Words of Experience and Hope for the Journey through Depression," with Larry Rothstein. She also wrote, "A Change of Heart: Words of Experience and Hope for the Journey through Divorce," published in 1996.

Her first book told her experience with depression, something she suffered from during much of the 1980s. She later founded The Depression Initiative, a nonprofit education foundation.

"She was a phenomenal mother," Vanessa Kerry, of Cambridge, told The Boston Globe. "And she affected many others, too. So many people have come up to me over the years, even on the campaign trail, to say how much of a difference her books made for them."

John Kerry called Thorne "a great friend to a lot of people."

"She was the best mom two daughters could want," he said. "She was completely committed to the kids and their future."

Thorne met Kerry in 1963 at her family's estate on Long Island, when Kerry, a Yale classmate of Thorne's twin brother, came for a visit. Kerry was clearly smitten, Thorne recalled in an interview with the Globe.

"He just kind of stood there and looked," she said. They married in 1970.

The couple had two daughters, Vanessa and Alexandra. They divorced in 1988. Thorne and Kerry remained friendly and she supported his 2004 presidential bid. Thorne married Richard J. Charlesworth in 1997 and they moved to Bozeman, Mont. She was being treated for transitional-cell carcinoma, a former of cancer, in the Boston area.

Thorne never felt comfortable with the demands of being a political wife, said Douglas Brinkley, author of "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War."

"What she disdained more than anything was politics," Brinkley said. "(Thorne) didn't enjoy the breakfasts, the lunches, the shaking of hands: the upbeat rigamarole of politics. She loathed the back-stabbing of it. She went on her own journey, one based on spirituality and nature."

Among her ancestors were Elias Boudinot IV, who was president of the Continental Congress, and William Bradford, attorney general under George Washington.

She spent much of her childhood in Italy, where her father had been appointed to a diplomatic post. She attended the Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Va., and after graduating, took classes at the New York School of Interior Design and Radcliffe College.

Besides her husband and daughters, Thorne leaves two brothers, David, of Brookline, and Landon K. III of Beaufort, S.C.

A memorial service is planned for the fall.

Does anyone remember Tony?
He was a quiet boy, a little over weight
He had breasts like a girl
When I wasn't too busy feeling lonely
I'd stare over his shoulder at a map of the world
He always finished all his homework
Raised his hand in homerooom
For the morning attendance
And the pledge alligence to the gloom

Hey Tony, what's so good about dying?
I think I might do a little dying today

Alexander B. Trowbridge, a commerce secretary in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, a former president of the National Association of Manufacturers and a longtime member of the Washington establishment, died yesterday at his home in Washington. He was 76.


The cause of death was dementia with Lewy disease, his family said.

Mr. Trowbridge's role in government and politics was not ordained. He was a young executive with a promising career in the oil industry in 1965 when he was offered the post of assistant commerce secretary in an agency that had lost much luster and seemed headed to merge with the Labor Department.

As assistant secretary for domestic and international business and then as acting secretary, Mr. Trowbridge traveled widely to promote commercial interests and, by many accounts, raised department morale.

Becoming secretary in June 1967 made him at 36 the youngest member of Johnson's cabinet and the youngest chief in the history of the Commerce Department.

One task was to help lower the deficit in the balance of payments by programs like one controlling private dollar investments abroad.

The department took part in domestic social programs. In one, Mr. Trowbridge was in charge of drawing up projects to create jobs for the hard-core unemployed.

The lingering effects of a heart attack prompted him to resign in 1968, but he recovered and months later was named president of the American Management Association, the executive development and training organization. He quit over a policy disagreement and, in 1970, took over as president of the National Industrial Conference Board, the business research organization now known as the Conference Board.

Mr. Trowbridge became vice chairman of Allied Chemical in 1976, when a scandal erupted over dumped pollutants. At issue was the handling and disposal of Kepone, an insecticide banned after it contaminated the James River in Virginia. Mr. Trowbridge helped work out a settlement. Allied agreed to compensate the affected river users and accept responsibility for the cleanup.

By 1980, the Environmental Protection Agency cited that response as a model for industry.

A member of many corporate boards, Mr. Trowbridge joined that of the National Association of Manufacturers in 1978 and became president in 1980. He became the spokesman and chief lobbyist for the largest and most influential industrial trade organization in the country.

Alexander Buel Trowbridge, known as Sandy, was born in Englewood, N.J., the son of an academic and grandson of an architect, both his namesakes. He graduated from Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts in 1947 and Princeton in 1951. He was a Marine officer and combat platoon leader in the Korean War, earning a Bronze Star.

After starting his career with Caltex Petroleum and Esso Standard Oil in Panama and El Salvador, Mr. Trowbridge became president of Esso Standard Puerto Rico in 1965. He was sitting in his office in San Juan when he received the call from the White House. President Johnson's talent scout, the chairman of the Civil Service Commission, had pulled Mr. Trowbridge's name from a file of 20,000 potential appointees and asked whether he was interested in working in Washington. After much thought, Mr. Trowbridge said later, he agreed that he was, and the job of assistant secretary was his.

Long active in Democratic Party affairs, he had advisory roles in successive administrations, including Republican ones. He was a Democratic member of President Richard M. Nixon's National Commission on Social Security, headed by Alan Greenspan, and was influential in its recommendation in 1983 to maintain the basic structure and reject suggestions that the program be voluntary or geared to individuals' needs.

He was on the first Bush administration's seven-member Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 1991 but was criticized for his ties to contractors servicing the bases and resigned from the panel before its final report.

After he retired from the manufacturers' association in 1990, he set up a consulting firm in Washington, Trowbridge Partners, and operated it until about two years ago.

Surviving are his wife of 25 years, Eleanor Hutzler Trowbridge; two sons and a daughter from his earlier marriage, Stephen, of Dallas; Corrin, of Redwood City, Calif.; and Kimberly Parent of Greenwich, Conn.; a stepdaughter, Barbara Verdaguer of Mousterlin, France; a stepson, Charles Hutzler of Beijing; a sister, Julie Cullen of Brooklin, Me.; a stepsister, Joya Cox of McLean, Va.; and nine grandchildren. His first marriage, to Nancey Horst Trowbridge, of Kiawah Island, S.C., ended in divorce.

it's song lyrics Tony. I just thought of them and figured they were oddly appropriate. I mean, what could be more appropriate than a chorus that says, "Hey Tony, What's so good about Dying?".

Not trying to cause trouble with you Tony, you're all good.

Tony's cool. Not sure where to post this, but the newspapers are saying Elizabeth Taylor is likely to die today.

S'all good.




Yeah I heard. A shame. She's been at death's door numerour times throughout her life.

Must admit I thought it might be inappropriate to quote the next lines of the chorus:



but in the interests of disclosure, there they are.

Elma G. Farnsworth, the widow of television pioneer Philo T.
Farnsworth, has died at 97.


She died yesterday in Bountiful of natural causes. Funeral arrangements
are pending.


Inventor Philo Farnsworth created an early television system and helped
develop radar. His pioneering work on television largely went
unrecognized until after his death in 1971, when Elma Farnsworth began
a years-long campaign to have him recognized as the inventor of the
technology.


She was raised on a farm in Vernal until the family moved to Provo. She
met Philo Farnsworth during her sophomore year in high school. They
were engaged on her birthday in February 1926 and married three months
later.

Steve Howe, the relief pitcher whose promising career was derailed by drug and alcohol abuse, died Friday when his pickup truck rolled over in Coachella, Calif. He was 48.

BOSTON (AP) John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard professor who won worldwide renown as a liberal economist, backstage politician and witty chronicler of affluent society, died Saturday night, his son said. He was 97.

Galbraith died of natural causes at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, where he was admitted nearly two weeks ago, Alan Galbraith said.

During a long career, the Canadian-born economist served as adviser to Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, and was John F. Kennedy's ambassador to India.

"He had a wonderful and full life," his son said.

Galbraith, who was outspoken in his support of government action to solve social problems, became a large figure on the American scene in the decades after World War II.

He was one of America's best-known liberals, and he never shied away from the label.

"There is no hope for liberals if they seek only to imitate conservatives, and no function either," Galbraith wrote in a 1992 article in Modern Maturity, a publication of the American Association of Retired Persons.

One of his most influential books, The Affluent Society, was published in 1958.

It argued that the American economy was producing individual wealth but hasn't adequately addressed public needs such as schools and highways. U.S. economists and politicians were still using the assumptions of the world of the past, where scarcity and poverty were near-universal, he said.

"The total alteration in underlying circumstances has not been squarely faced," he wrote. "As a result, we are guided, in part, by ideas that are relevant to another world. ... We do many things that are unnecessary, some that are unwise, and a few that are insane."

In 1999, a panel of judges organized by the Modern Library, a book publisher, picked The Affluent Society as No. 46 on its list of the century's 100 best English-language works of non-fiction.

"He's an amazingly imaginative and creative and hardworking person," fellow economist and longtime friend Paul Samuelson said in 1994. "There's no day that goes by that he doesn't write every morning, and it adds up to a lot."

Galbraith also was known for his theories on countervailing forces in the economy, where groups such as labor unions were needed to strike a political and social balance.

Richard Neustadt, a Harvard colleague who also served as an aide to presidents Kennedy and Truman, said Galbraith demonstrated how "you have to empower people directly before they could fight for themselves."

Galbraith, greeted by the Great Depression when he graduated from college, also had "much more confidence in the ability to work out of economic difficulties and do so with the help of government," Neustadt said.

Galbraith's prose won admiration at the very top. When he was ambassador to India, Kennedy enjoyed his writing so much that he insisted on seeing all Galbraith's cables, "whether they were directed at the president or not," Neustadt said.

After his retirement from Harvard in 1975, Galbraith gained fresh recognition as host of the British-made television series, The Age of Uncertainty. His book under the same title was a best seller, as was Almost Everyone's Guide to Economics.

Among his other books were The Great Crash, 1955, and The Culture of Contentment, 1992. He returned to the theme of the crash of 1929 in a January 1987 Atlantic Monthly article that correctly predicted that year's market plunge by citing the parallels of the two eras.

In 1988, he and Soviet economist Stanislav Menshikov wrote Capitalism, Communism and Coexistence: From the Bitter Past to a Better Prospect. The book is a compilation of discussions conducted at Galbraith's summer home in Townsend, Vt., about socialism and capitalism. His 1996 book, The Good Society, outlined his blueprint for enriching America economically and socially, while his 1999 book, Name-Dropping: From FDR On, was a lighthearted look at his encounters with everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt onward.

"It is not usual for a man past his 90th birthday to write a book that is as fresh and lively as the work of a 30-year-old. But John Kenneth Galbraith is not a usual man, and he has done it," The New York Times wrote about Name-Dropping.

Globe-trotting was a favorite activity of Galbraith, who spent time touring India during his tenure as ambassador. He wrote a factual account of his India years as well as a novel, The Triumph, concerning what he called "an uncontrollably funny institution," the U.S. State Department.

From Cambridge to Tokyo, the 6-foot, 7-inch Galbraith was an avid reciter of dry limericks and pungent, outrageous humor, often at the expense of American society.

Noting that by the law of aerodynamics, the bumblebee in principle cannot fly, Galbraith once remarked, "If all this be true, life among bumblebees must bear a remarkable resemblance to life in the United States."

He was an ardent worker, often hibernating for several months at his summer home in the Vermont mountains to do nothing but write. His secretary in his Harvard office would warn those trying to contact him Ч "on penalty of death" Ч to call him only between noon and 1 p.m., when he took his lunch break.

Galbraith was born Oct. 15, 1908, in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada.

After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1931, Galbraith moved to the United States where he earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California. He taught at Harvard from 1934 to 1939 and at Princeton University from 1939 to 1942, then worked in the federal Office of Price Administration during the war years.

Galbraith returned to Harvard in 1948, remaining active on the faculty until his retirement.

He was the recipient of the Medal of Freedom, awarded by Truman in 1946, and another one from President Clinton in 2000. The professor also served as president for a term of the American Economic Association.

Galbraith was married in 1937 to Catherine Atwater. They had three sons, Alan, Peter and James.

William Durkin, the Marine who pulled Howard Hughes from the wreckage of a plane he had been test-piloting over Beverly Hills, has died. He would have turned 90 Sunday.

Durkin died Saturday at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs of a heart attack, said his daughter, Kimberly Durkin.

Durkin was on his way to meet a date on July 7, 1946, when he saw the fiery wreckage of Hughes' XF-11 reconnaissance plane and rescued the eccentric billionaire. Hughes was burned on 78 percent of his body and mangled from his forehead to below his knees. He hovered near death days later, but rallied to fly again.

Less than a year later, Hughes climbed back into an XF-11 cockpit, a "twin" of the crashed plane, for a successful test flight.

The crash was the centerpiece of Martin Scorsese's acclaimed 2004 film "The Aviator," which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes.

Despite rumors that Durkin received a generous reward from the aviation giant, his daughter said he refused to take any money from Hughes, who died in 1976.

"There was a lot of talk over the years that he rewarded him with gazillions of dollars, which is just not true," Kimberly Durkin said. "They were friends. They cavorted with each other for many years. He never got any big payoff because he wouldn't take it. He felt you shouldn't be paid off for doing what was right."

William Lloyd Durkin was born on April 30, 1916, in Oil City, Pa. He retired with the rank of captain, his daughter said.

After serving in the Marines, Durkin worked in the food and beverage industry, his daughter said. He retired in Palm Springs.

He is survived by his wife, Diane, daughters Kimberly and Denise, and several grandchildren

Jean-Francois Revel, philosopher, prolific writer, noted commentator,
dies

Canadian Press
Published: Sunday, April 30, 2006

PARIS (AP) - Jean-Francois Revel, a philosopher, eclectic writer and a
journalist whose commentaries on the state of France and the world were
for years a mainstay of the French media, died Sunday, his wife said.
He was 82.

Revel, who also was a member of the noted Academie Francaise, died at
Kremlin-Bicetre Hospital, just south of Paris, said his wife Claude
Sarraute, a former journalist herself. The cause of death was not
immediately revealed.

Revel, author of about 30 books whose subjects ranged from poetry to
gastronomy to politics, became known in later years for his
conservative position and pro-American stance as editor-in-chief of the
newsweekly L'Express and commentator at that magazine and later at
rival Le Point.

One of his latest books, published in 2002, was entitled L'Obsession
anti-americaine. Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconsequences
(The Anti-American Obsession. Its Functioning, Its Causes, Its
Inconsequentialness).

Among other books in his assorted collection of works is Le moine et le
philosophe (The Monk and The Philosopher), published in 1997, in
collaboration with his son Matthieu Ricard, himself a Buddhist monk who
is close to the Dalai Lama.

Revel, known as a bon vivant with gourmet tastes, was appointed one of
the 40 so-called immortals of the Academie Francaise, a watchdog of the
French language, in 1997.

Revel "was a free spirit (whose) works trace a singular, fertile,
indispensable path," Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said.

In his statement, Villepin said Revel "was one of the first to
relentlessly denounce Soviet totalitarianism."

Jean d'Ormesson, a fellow "immortal" at the Academie Francaise, called
Revel "one of the great intellectuals of our time" and his death "a
great loss for the Academie Francaise and for the country."

Born in Marseille on Jan. 19, 1924, Revel obtained a degree in
philosophy, then taught French in several high schools, including in
Mexico and Florence, Italy. While a prolific writer, he got a late
start in his literary career. Starting in 1960, he was employed at
three publishing houses, until 1978.

He joined L'Express in 1966, staying there until 1981. He then became a
commentator at Le Point and several radio stations.

D'Ormesson, speaking on France-Info radio, noted Revel's "very
interesting" political path, moving from Socialist thinking to liberal
economic views.

LES CROSETS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Former Swiss World Cup skier Corinne Rey-Bellet has been shot dead at her family home, police said on Monday.

Rey-Bellet, who retired from the World Cup circuit in 2003, was killed along with her brother Alain in the small ski resort of Les Crosets on Sunday night.

Jean-Marie Bornet, a spokesman for canton Valais police, told Swiss state radio that a possible domestic crime "could not be excluded."

Rey-Bellet won five World Cup races during her career including a rare feat of two wins on the same day in January 1999.

The 33-year-old former speed specialist also won a silver medal in downhill at the 2003 world championships in St Moritz and took part in four Winter Olympics.

Following the birth of her son in November 2003, Rey-Bellet was retraining to become a physiotherapist.

"We just heard the news this morning and we were all so shocked," said Swiss Ski director Hansruedi Laich. "To lose such a great skier in this way is tragic."

"It's just horrific," agreed Rey-Bellet's former team colleague Sylviane Berthod. "At first I couldn't believe it. I just cannot imagine what could have happened."

Rey-Bellet's mother was taken to hospital in a serious condition after being injured in the attack. Bornet said that Rey-Bellet's father and her two-year-old son had been taken into safe keeping.

He added that the police were keen to talk to her husband Gerold Stadler.

"We hope to make contact as quickly as possible," Bornet said. "We are looking to contact him to advance the investigation."

Bornet said the police had "precise indications" as to the identity of the perpetrator but declined to elaborate "in the interests of the investigation."

MERAUDER Guitarist SOB Dies - May 1, 2006

According to postings on MERAUDER's MySpace.com page, the band's former guitarist Sob has passed away. A founding member of the acclaimed New York-based metal/hardcore act, Sob played on all three of the band's albums — 1996's "Master Killer", 1999's "5 Deadly Venoms" and 2003's "Bluetality" — which were released through the Century Media label. Services will be held Tuesday (May 2) at Schaefer Funeral in Brooklyn.

Jay Presson Allen, 84, Writer of Adaptations for the Stage, Dies

Jay Presson Allen, who as an adapter of novels for plays and movies developed some of the most memorable roles for women in the late 1960's and 1970's, died yesterday morning at her home in Manhattan. She was 84.

The cause was a stroke, said her daughter, Brooke Allen.

Ms. Allen made her breakthrough with a stage adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," about a romantic and frustrated Edinburgh schoolteacher who, for good or ill, has a magnetic influence on her students.

In its first few years, the role brought out critically acclaimed performances from almost every actress who played it; Vanessa Redgrave, who originated the role in London in 1966, won raves, and Zoe Caldwell won a Tony Award in the 1968 American production. In 1969, Ms. Allen adapted the play for the screen, and Maggie Smith won the Academy Award for best actress. In 1968, Ms. Allen also wrote an English adaptation of "Forty Carats," originally a French play about a 40-year-old divorc�e who begins a relationship with a 22-year-old man. For that, Julie Harris won a Tony Award.

Ms. Allen's ability to develop star-making roles for women was not limited to the stage. In 1972 she adapted the musical "Cabaret" for the screen; it was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture and best adapted screenplay. Liza Minnelli won best actress for her role as the tragically oblivious party girl Sally Bowles.

(Not only women excelled in Ms. Allen's roles. Robert Morse won a Tony Award for his portrayal of late-career Truman Capote in Ms. Allen's 1989 one-man show, "Tru.")

Ms. Allen, known for her withering wit and sometimes-off-color wisecracks, was one of the few women making a living as a screenwriter at a time when women were a rarity in the profession. She was primarily an adapter, most successful in her ability to make compelling dialogue out of other people's works.

In addition to adapting Ms. Spark's novel, Ms. Allen dramatized a novel by Graham Greene - for the 1972 movie "Travels With My Aunt"- and a nonfiction book by Robert Daley - for "Prince of the City," a dark 1981 drama about police corruption that she wrote with Sidney Lumet. For both "Cabaret" and "Deathtrap," a 1982 thriller starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve, her screenplays were based on Broadway shows.

For the stage, she twice adapted the works of the French playwriting team Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy; for "Tru," which she also directed, she created a play out of Capote's own writings.

"The trick in adapting," Ms. Allen said in a 1982 interview with The New York Times, "is not to throw out the baby with the bath water. You can change all kinds of things, but don't muck around with the essence."

Jay Presson was born on March 3, 1922, in Fort Worth, the daughter of a department store manager and a buyer of women's clothing. She attended a girls' school in Dallas but skipped college, moving out to California at 18 to become an actress.

It did not take long for her to turn from acting to writing. In 1948, she published a novel, "Spring Riot," and during the 1950's wrote scripts for live drama television shows like the Philco Television Playhouse.

In 1955, through Robert Whitehead, who later produced "Jean Brodie," she met Lewis M. Allen. Mr. Allen, whom she married, produced two of her plays, "Tru" and "The Big Love"; he died in 2003. In addition to her daughter, Ms. Allen is survived by two grandchildren.

After her marriage, Ms. Allen stopped writing for several years, but returned to screenwriting in 1964, adapting Winston Graham's novel "Marnie" at the request of Alfred Hitchcock.

But she achieved her greatest critical success when she read Ms. Spark's novel and, at the encouragement of Lillian Hellman, wrote her stage version. Ms. Spark died on April 14.

Other works by Ms. Allen include "Funny Lady" (a sequel to "Funny Girl") and "Just Tell Me What You Want," a romantic comedy directed by Mr. Lumet and featuring a critically praised turn by Alan King as a vulgar, megalomaniacal business magnate. The movie was based on a novel that Ms. Allen wrote for the purpose of adapting it.

She also worked in television, creating the drama "Family," which ran four seasons. In the last decades, Ms. Allen occasionally cleaned up scripts for movies, though she was not credited. And while her writing dropped off, she remained curious, observing particularly salacious crime trials from the benches in Manhattan Criminal Court.

In an interview with The Times in 1968, one of her busiest years, Ms. Allen said that she was not particularly driven in her career.

"Writing," she said, "is such a divorcement from living."

Hollywood publicist and manager Jay Bernstein has died
at the age of 69. Friend and former employer Warren Cowan says
Bernstein died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after suffering a
stroke.

Bernstein's longtime client, Farrah Fawcett, was at his bedside. As a
manager, Cowan says Bernstein helped turn Fawcett from an unknown
beauty into a household name. He did the same for Suzanne Somers and
Kristy McNichol.

Bernstein was also known for creative publicity campaigns, including
having Mary Hart's legs insured for a million dollars after she joined
"Entertainment Tonight."

Bernstein left public relations to pursue work as a manager and
producer. His credits include the 1979 movies "Sunburn" and "Nothing
Personal" and television series such as "The New Mike Hammer."

Television Host Louis Rukeyser Dies

By DAVE COLLINS, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

(05-03) 03:51 PDT Hartford, Conn. (AP) --

Louis Rukeyser, a best-selling author, columnist, lecturer and television host who delivered pun-filled, commonsense commentary on complicated business and economic news, died Tuesday. He was 73.

Rukeyser died at his home in Greenwich after a long battle with multiple myeloma, a rare bone marrow cancer, said his brother, Bud Rukeyser.

As host of "Wall Week With Louis Rukeyser" on public TV from 1970 until 2002, Rukeyser took a wry approach to the ups and downs in the marketplace and urged guests to avoid jargon. He brought finance and economics to ordinary viewers and investors, and was rewarded with the largest audience in the history of financial journalism.

"He brings to the tube a blend of warmth, wit, irreverence, thrusting intellect and large doses of charm, plus the credibility of a Walter Cronkite," Money magazine wrote in a cover story.

Rukeyser also won numerous awards and honors, including a citation by People magazine as the only sex symbol of the "dismal science" of economics.

"Our prime mission is to make previously baffling economic information understandable and interesting to people in general," he once said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Bud Rukeyser called his brother "a giant at what he did."

"He was a pioneer in economic reporting in television. Right up to the time he got ill, he was at the top of the heap," he said in a telephone interview.

Louis Rukeyser quit "Wall Week" and moved to CNBC in March 2002 rather than go along with executives' plan to demote him and use younger hosts to update the format.

Maryland Public Television, which produced the show, said it was firing him after he used "Wall Week" to complain about his producers. He contended the station could not fire him because he was never its employee.

Less than a month later, he debuted with "Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street" on financial network CNBC. The new show also aired on some PBS stations.

Neither his old show nor his new one lasted long after that.

Rukeyser's last appearance on his CNBC show was Oct. 31, 2003, after which he went on medical leave for surgery to relieve persistent pain in his back. In May 2004, he announced that doctors found a low-grade malignancy during a follow-up exam.

Later that year, Rukeyser asked CNBC to end production of his show, which had continued with guest hosts. The PBS successor to Rukeyser's show struggled, too, and Maryland Public Television pulled the plug in 2005.

"He has been a financial institution," said Michael Holland, a New York fund manager and sometime Rukeyser guest. "No one can replace him. He brought financial journalism to a new level with his trademarks of honesty, humor and fairness. He always looked at both sides of the issues. His only bias was toward optimism."

Rukeyser was born in New York on Jan. 30, 1933. He did not begin his career as a financial journalist, though his father, Merryle Stanley Rukeyser, was a columnist for Hearst Newspapers and International News Service for more than 30 years.

He graduated from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1954, specializing in public aspects of business. He was a political and foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun papers, chief political correspondent for the Evening Sun, chief of the Sun's London Bureau and chief Asian correspondent for the Sun.

He also worked at ABC News as a senior correspondent and commentator, serving as Paris correspondent and chief of the London bureau.

Rukeyser, who published best-selling books and newsletters, rejected the idea that economics is "too dull and-or too complicated to hold an audience larger than the capacity of your average telephone booth.

"I think that's nonsense," he told the AP. "I think there is a hunger in the American public for clear, believable, understandable, usable pocketbook information."

Rukeyser helped to popularize the often dull and arcane subjects of economics and finance with puns that drew appreciative groans from his audience.

Once while answering a viewer's letter on investing in a hairpiece manufacturer, he said, "If all your money seems to be hair today and gone tomorrow, we'll try to make it grow by giving you the bald facts on how to get your investments toupee."

After a market slump, he considered changing the name of the show to "Wall Street Wake."

"We have in America a bad tendency that things have to be either serious or fun," he once told the AP. "Whereas in real life, this isn't true. The teachers we all remember in high school and college were not the ones who put us to sleep. I don't think any of us should apologize for not being dull."

Rukeyser was survived by his wife, Alexandra, and three daughters.

A private funeral service was to be held this week, and his body was to be cremated, Bud Rukeyser said. Family members planned a larger memorial service in New York at a later date.

CHICAGO - Tejano music pioneer Rosita Fernandez, who performed Mexican ballads for five US presidents, Pope John Paul II and Prince Charles, died on Tuesday.

In over 60 years of entertaining, Fernandez made hundreds of recordings and performed at President Jimmy Carter's inauguration.

Fernandez, 88, had been admitted to hospital about a week ago, her son told the San Antonio Express.

"For the last year, her health had been failing but her spirit was happy,'' Raul Almaguer said Wednesday.

Born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1919, Fernandez spent much of her life in San Antonio, according to the University of Texas at San Antonio which holds her archives.

She began her singing career as a young girl touring tent shows in south Texas with her uncles and became the lead in a local radio show at the age of 13.

She also had a career in television and film and worked with Dean Martin, Joan Crawford, and Ed Sullivan.

Her largest film role was the leading lady in Disney's 1963 film "Sancho, the Homing Steer". She also appeared in the 1960 John Wayne film, "The Alamo".

Noall Wootton, the county attorney who prosecuted
the nation's first person executed after the 1976 reinstatement of the
death penalty, died Thursday. He was 65.

Wootton died of cancer. Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, a former Utah County
commissioner, said Wootton "provided great public service (as county
attorney) and was also well-regarded in his private practice. He served
with honor and distinction and was respected by his peers."

Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in January 1977, the year
after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty following a
10-year moratorium.

Gilmore was executed for the 1976 slaying of Provo motel clerk Bennie
Bushnell. He also was charged with capital murder for killing Brigham
Young University law student Max Jensen, a part-time Orem gas station
attendant, the night before the Bushnell murder.

Wootton, who was Utah County attorney from 1974 to 1986, was in his
first term when he prosecuted Gilmore.

Earl Woods, father of Tiger Woods, dies

By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer
May 3, 2006

Earl Woods, who was more determined to raise a good son than a great golfer and became the architect and driving force behind Tiger Woods' phenomenal career, died Wednesday morning at his home in Cypress, Calif. He was 74.

"My dad was my best friend and greatest role model, and I will miss him deeply," Tiger Woods said on his Web site. "I'm overwhelmed when I think of all of the great things he accomplished in his life. He was an amazing dad, coach, mentor, soldier, husband and friend. I wouldn't be where I am today without him, and I'm honored to continue his legacy of sharing and caring."

Woods was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998 and was treated with radiation, but the cancer returned in 2004 and spread throughout his body. Last month, he was too frail to travel to the Masters for the first time. His son finished tied for third.

The last tournament Woods attended was the Target World Challenge in December 2004, when his son rallied to win and then donated $1.25 million to the Tiger Woods Foundation that his father helped him establish.

Earl Woods was more than a golf dad, more than a zealous father who lived vicariously through his son's achievements.




He had played catcher for Kansas State, the first black to play baseball in the Big Eight Conference, and he had been a Green Beret for two tours in Vietnam. But he felt his true purpose was to train Tiger, and he watched his son evolve into the dominant player of his time -- the youngest player to win the career Grand Slam -- and one of the most celebrated athletes in the world.

"I knew Tiger was special the day he was born," Woods said in a May 2000 interview with The Associated Press.

Woods introduced Tiger to golf by swinging a club as his son watched in a high chair. Tiger appeared on the "Mike Douglas Show" at age 2, played exhibitions with Sam Snead and Jack Nicklaus, and his television appeal was solely responsible for quantum gains in PGA Tour prize money.

Even so, Woods said he never intended to create a champion golfer.

"I make it very, very clear that my purpose in raising Tiger was not to raise a golfer. I wanted to raise a good person," Woods told Golf Digest magazine about his book, "Training a Tiger: A Father's Guide to Raising a Winner in Both Golf and Life."

Woods gave his son freedom to develop a love for golf on his own, not letting him play unless his homework was done, making him call his father at work to ask if they could practice. Along with the games they played, Woods taught him to be mentally strong by jingling change in his pockets and warning him of water hazards when his son was in the middle of his swing.

It all worked.

Tiger Woods set records that might never be broken by winning three straight U.S. Junior titles, followed by three straight U.S. Amateurs. In only 10 years as a pro, he already was won 48 times on the PGA Tour with 10 major championships, and he set a PGA Tour record by going seven years and 142 consecutive events making the cut.

In the forward to his father's book, Woods said: "In retrospect, golf for me was an apparent attempt to emulate the person I looked up to more than anyone: my father. He was instrumental in helping me develop the drive to achieve, but his role -- as well as my mother's -- was one of support and guidance, not interference."




PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said Woods will be remembered for providing Tiger every opportunity "to become the world's best golfer and an outstanding representative of the game and its values."

Foremost for Earl Woods was raising a son who could influence life beyond golf. Woods was black and his wife, Kultida, whom he met during one of his tours to Vietnam, was Thai and Chinese.

Tiger Woods won twice in his first seven PGA Tour events after turning pro in 1996 at age 20 and was named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. Woods predicted greatness for Tiger on and off the course, telling the magazine that his son "will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity."

"He's the bridge between the East and the West," the father said. "There is no limit because he has the guidance. I don't know yet exactly what form this will take. But he is the Chosen One. He'll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power."

Perhaps the lasting image of Earl Woods came the next spring, at the 1997 Masters, when he stepped onto the 18th green and wrapped his arms around a 21-year-old son who shattered records at Augusta National, a watershed victory that changed the appeal of golf and sent him to the greatness his father had always predicted.

Earl Woods was born March 5, 1932, in Manhattan, Kan., the youngest of six children. His parents died by the time he was 13.

His father wanted him to play for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues, and his mother stressed education. Woods wound up going to Kansas State, graduating in 1953 with a degree is sociology.

Woods did two tours during the Vietnam War as a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. It was his second tour that shaped the latter part of his life.

He met Kultida Punsawad, who was working as a receptionist in Thailand, and married her in 1969. He fought alongside Lt. Col. Nguyen T. Phong of the South Vietnamese army, a friend he nicknamed "Tiger" because of his courage and bravery. Woods promised Tiger Phong that he would name a son after him.

Eldrick "Tiger" Woods was born Dec. 30, 1975.

Earl Woods moved to Cypress, Calif., -- to the house where he died -- and set up a makeshift practice range in the garage with a mat and a net, placing his son in a high chair as he practiced.

The education went beyond swinging a club.

"I tried to break him down mentally, tried to intimidate him verbally, by saying, 'Water on the right, OB on the left,' just before his downswing," Woods once said in an AP interview. "He would look at me with the most evil look, but he wasn't permitted to say anything. That's the frustration. He couldn't say a word, but he always had an escape word. He never used it.

"One day I did all my tricks, and he looked at me and smiled," Woods said. "At the end of the round, I told him, 'Tiger, you've completed the training.' And I made him a promise. 'You'll never run into another person as mentally tough as you.' He hasn't. And he won't."

Saxophonist was Johnny & the Hurricanes' leader


John M. Pocisk, 65, known worldwide as Johnny Paris of Johnny & the Hurricanes for such hit records as "Red River Rock" and "Beatnik Fly," died Monday in University Hospital at the University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor.

He was in the hospital almost two months, but his illness and the cause of death won't be known pending an autopsy, his son, Jeff, said.

Mr. Pocisk of Rossford, a tenor saxophonist, toured Europe regularly, most recently Sweden in November.

"Over in Europe, he was still popular," his son said. "He liked that he could come back here and have his own peace and be a regular guy and go someplace else and be a star."

Mr. Pocisk was a Rossford High School student when he formed his first band. His next group, the Orbits, developed a following. They backed a vocal group on a demo tape. A management agency preferred the musicians, who became Johnny & the Hurricanes.

"Crossfire," was a regional favorite in 1959. Big hits followed, especially "Red River Rock," which, with its distinctive organ sound, sold more than a million copies and reached No. 5 on charts in the United States and No. 3 in Britain.

Johnny & the Hurricanes played the Star Club in Hamburg in 1962, headlining a bill that included an unknown English group, the Beatles.

Mr. Pocisk later had his own record label. In the Toledo area through the years, he sold real estate and owned an antique shop and a vending machine business. He lived in Germany in the late 1980s and into the '90s.

He was previously married to Sharon Venier Woodson.

Surviving are his wife, Sonja Reuter, whom he married in November, 1996; daughters, Sheri Sobel and Monica Morgan; son, Jeffrey Pocisk; sister, Janice Gurtzweiler; brother, James Pocisk, and five grandchildren.

There will be no visitation. Services will be private. Arrangements are by the Sujkowski Funeral Home of Rossford.

Lillian Gertrud Asplund, last U.S. survivor of Titanic sinking, dead at 99 Canadian Press

BOSTON (AP) - Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, has died, family and friends said Sunday. She was 99.

Asplund, who was five years old that night in 1912, lost her father and three brothers - including a fraternal twin - when the "practically unsinkable" ship went down in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. "She even said she saw the ship slip into the water," said Philip Maloof, her lawyer and close friend. "She was the last one (left) in the world to actually see the disaster."

At least two other survivors are living, but they were too young to remember what happened. Barbara Joyce West Dainton of Truro, England, was 10 months old and Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean of Southampton, England, was two months old.

Asplund died in her sleep Saturday at her home in Shrewsbury, outside Worcester.

"She was good up until the end," said her cousin, Alden Carlson, 59.

The Asplund family had boarded the ship in Southampton, England, as third-class passengers on their way back to Worcester from their ancestral homeland, Sweden, where they had spent several years.

Asplund's mother, Selma, and another brother, Felix, who was three, also survived the Titanic sinking in the early morning of April 15, 1912.

Selma Asplund told her daughter it was not good to talk about the catastrophe, and she rarely did.

Instead, Asplund lived a quiet life, working as a clerk for an insurance company in Worcester. She never married and never got a driver's license.

Asplund and her brother, who also remained single, bought a home in Shrewsbury and moved their mother there, who was ill.

Selma Asplund died on the 52nd anniversary of the sinking in 1964 at age 91. Felix Asplund died on March 1, 1983.

After retiring, Asplund lived alone, gardening and watching soap operas on television. She continued to heed her mother's advice and rejected requests to talk about what happened on the Titanic.

Privately, however, Asplund opened up. Maloof, her lawyer, said she broached the subject voluntarily as the pair became friends.

"She told me that she saw her father standing on the Titanic," Maloof said. "She didn't say specifically that she was in a lifeboat, but she must have been."

Still, Asplund refused to sit for interviews, even if they offered to pay her.

"Why do I want money from the Titanic," Maloof recalled Asplund saying. "Look what I lost. A father and three brothers."

Three or four yeas ago, Asplund did talk to a reporter from The Washington Post, Maloof said. Even then, she remained reserved, rebuffing the interviewer's requests to take photographs or tape record the conversation.

Asplund's mother described the sinking in an interview with the Worcester Telegram & Gazette newspaper shortly after the accident.

The family went to the Titanic's upper deck after the ship struck the iceberg, Selma Asplund said.

"I could see the icebergs for a great distance around . . . It was cold and the little ones were cuddling close to one another and trying to keep from under the feet of the many excited people . . . My little girl, Lillie, accompanied me, and my husband said 'Go ahead, we will get into one of the other boats.' He smiled as he said it."

Because they lost all of their possessions and money, the city of Worcester held a fundraiser and a benefit concert that together brought in about $2,000 for the surviving Asplunds.

A memorial service is scheduled for Wednesday.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/st...04e&k=78912&p=2

George Lee Lutz, whose brief stay in an Amityville,
N.Y., home spawned one of the most famous haunted house stories ever,
has died of natural causes.

Lutz, a Las Vegas resident, died Monday, his lawyer, Larry Zerner of
Los Angeles, confirmed Wednesday. He was 59 years old.

The Clark County coroner listed Lutz' cause of the death as heart
disease.

Lutz, a former land surveyor, became famous after moving his new bride
and three children into a three-story Dutch colonial on Long Island in
1975, about a year after six members of the DeFeo family had been shot
and killed in the home. Ronald DeFeo Jr., the eldest son, was convicted
of the murders.

The Lutzes lived in the home for 28 days before being driven out by the
spirits of the DeFeos, according to Lutz' account.


The family's tales of eerie feelings and waking dead became the source
for Jay Anson's 1977 book, "The Amityville Horror," along with a 1979
film of the same title and a 2005 movie remake.


The book and movies chronicled the Lutz family's horrors in suburbia,
including visions of walls oozing slime, moving furniture, a visit from
a demonic pig named Jodie and spontaneous levitation.


The franchise made Lutz, who some claimed bore a creepy resemblance to
Ronald DeFeo, a cult figure.


Recently, Lutz' story has been challenged by some who accused him of
intentionally moving into the home to profit from the DeFeo murders.
Lutz stuck by his story.


"People are disrespecting a true story," he told People Magazine last
year. "It's my family's story, and it's hurtful."

A.M. Rosenthal, 84, Dies; Reshaped The Times as Editor

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

A.M. Rosenthal, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent who became the executive editor of The New York Times and led the paper's global news operations through 17 years of record growth, modernization and major journalistic change, died today at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan. He was 84.

Mr. Rosenthal, who lived in Manhattan, had a stroke two weeks ago and never recovered, his son Andrew said.

From ink-stained days as a campus correspondent at City College through exotic years as a reporter in the capitals and byways of Europe, Asia and Africa, Mr. Rosenthal climbed on rungs of talent, drive and ambition to the highest echelons of The Times and American journalism.

Brilliant, passionate, abrasive, a man of dark moods and mercurial temperament, he could coolly evaluate world developments one minute and humble a subordinate for an error in the next. He spent almost all of his 60-year career with The Times Ч he often called it his life Ч but it was a career in three parts: reporter, editor and columnist.

As a reporter and correspondent for 19 years, he covered New York City, the United Nations, India, Poland, Japan and other regions of the world, winning acclaim for his prolific, stylish writing, and a Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer was for international reporting in 1960, for what the Communist regime in Poland, which had expelled him the previous year, called probing too deeply.

Then, returning to New York in 1963, he became an editor. Over the next 23 years, he served successively as metropolitan editor, assistant managing editor, managing editor and executive editor, enlarging his realms of authority by driving his staffs relentlessly, pursuing the news aggressively and outmaneuvering rivals for the executive suite.

After being named managing editor in 1969, Mr. Rosenthal was briefly outranked by James Reston, the executive editor. But Mr. Reston soon accepted a vice presidency, Mr. Rosenthal assumed command of news operations, and the executive editorship was dropped until 1977, when Mr. Rosenthal took the title.

At the helm of a staff of highly regarded editors and writers that included many young stars he had recruited, Mr. Rosenthal directed coverage of the major news stories of the era Ч the war in Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate scandal and successive crises in the Middle East.

Publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 was a historic achievement for The Times. The papers, a 7,000-page secret government history of the Vietnam War, showed that every administration since World War II had enlarged America's involvement while hiding the true dimensions of the conflict. But publishing the classified documents was risky: Would there be fines or jail terms? Would readers consider it treasonous? Would it lead to financial ruin for the paper?

The Nixon administration tried to suppress publication, and the case led to a landmark Supreme Court decision upholding the primacy of the press over government attempts to impose "prior restraint" on what may be printed. Major roles were played by Times staff members, among them Neil Sheehan, the correspondent who had uncovered the papers. But it was Mr. Rosenthal as editor, arguing strenuously for publication, and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the publisher, who made the crucial decisions.

Despite the crisis atmosphere, there were some light moments. In an oft-told tale, Mr. Sulzberger recalled that when he told Mr. Rosenthal he wanted to read the Pentagon documents before deciding whether to publish them, Mr. Rosenthal, with barely concealed glee, wheeled a grocery cart containing the papers into the publisher's office.

After 17 years as a principal architect of the modern New York Times, Mr. Rosenthal stepped down as the top editor in 1986 as he neared his job's mandatory retirement age of 65. Mr. Sulzberger said at the time that Mr. Rosenthal's "record of performance as executive editor of The Times will last as a monument to one of the titans of American journalism."

He then began the last phase of his Times career, nearly 13 years as the author of a twice-weekly column, "On My Mind," for the Op-Ed page. His first column, on Jan. 6, 1987, and his last, on Nov. 5, 1999, carried the same headline, which he wrote: "Please Read This Column."

Latin Grammy Winner Soraya Dies at 37

Thursday May 11, 2006 9:55am EST
By Stephen M. Silverman
CREDIT: REED SAXON / AP

Latin Grammy-winning singer Soraya died Wednesday morning in Florida after a battle with breast cancer, the Associated Press reports. She was 37.

She died in a Miami hospital, said Lorena Oriani, a spokeswoman for her record label, EMI Latin

The Colombian-American, whose mother, aunt and grandmother died of breast cancer, was diagnosed with stage three of the disease in June 2000. She successfully underwent treatment but was said to have suffered a relapse at the beginning of the year.

A soulful singer whose music ranged from romanticism to social conscience, Soraya won a Latin Grammy for best singer/songwriter album with her self-titled 2003 release. She was well known for integrating cumbia and flamenco music with her own style of pop rock and had released her last album in 2005.

This week, she posted a farewell message to fans on her Web site. "I have not lost this battle, because I know the fight was not in vain,” she wrote. “Instead, it will help end a larger battle, which is early detection to prevent this terrible disease."

A public memorial service will take place at 6:30 p.m. EST on Friday at Unity on the Bay in Miami. Donations may be made in Soraya's name to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Hard Bop pianist John Hicks has died at age 65. He worked with jazz artists such as Lee Morgan & Joe Henderson. If I had to describe his sound, he could easily be mistaken for McCoy Tyner.

Former Heavyweight Boxing Champion Floyd Patterson has died at age 71.

Floyd Patterson, 71, ex-heavyweight champ
By Frank Litsky The New York Times

THURSDAY, MAY 11, 2006


Floyd Patterson, who turned his troubled young life around with boxing and became, despite a gentle disposition, the world heavyweight champion, died Thursday in New Paltz, New York. He was 71.

He had Alzheimer's disease for about eight years and also had prostate cancer, said his nephew, Sherman Patterson, according to The Associated Press.

In the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Patterson won the middleweight gold medal with five knockouts in five bouts. Then, in a 20-year professional career, he won 55 bouts, lost 8 and fought to 1 draw.

He won the heavyweight title twice, knocking out Archie Moore and Ingemar Johansson. He lost it twice, defended it successfully seven times and failed three times to regain it.

Floyd Patterson was born Jan. 4, 1935, in a cabin in Waco, North Carolina, the third of 11 children. His father, Thomas, was a manual laborer and his mother, Annabelle, was a domestic who later worked in a bottling plant until the family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

He became a frequent truant who fell behind in school. At age 11, he could not read or write. He would not talk, and when someone talked to him he refused to look the person in the face. His mother had him committed to a school in upstate New York for emotionally disturbed boys, and his teachers helped him learn to read and encouraged him to take up boxing there, which he did.

At 14, he started working out at the Gramercy Gym on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and in 1950, he also started boxing as an amateur. In 1951, he won the New York Golden Gloves open middleweight title. In 1952, after his Olympic success, he turned professional.

By 1956, he had become a leading heavyweight. When Rocky Marciano retired that year as the undefeated champion, Patterson was matched against Moore, the light-heavyweight champion, for the heavyweight title. He stopped Moore in five rounds and at 21 became the youngest heavyweight champion to that point.

Patterson defended the title willingly but uncomfortably. In 1957, he knocked out Pete Rademacher in six rounds in Seattle and in 1958 he stopped Roy Harris in 12 rounds in Los Angeles.

On June 26, 1959, at Yankee Stadium, Patterson lost the title when Johansson knocked him down seven times before the referee stopped the bout in the third round. On June 20, 1960, at the Polo Grounds in New York, Patterson knocked out Johansson in the fifth round and became the first to regain the heavyweight title.

The glory days ended when Patterson lost two title fights against Sonny Liston, in 1962 in Chicago and in 1963 in Las Vegas, although he continued until 1972.

After Patterson retired, he became a respected front man for the sport. In 1983, he told a congressional subcommittee: "I would not like to see boxing abolished. I come from a ghetto, and boxing is a way out. It would be pitiful to abolish boxing because you would be taking away the one way out."

Cult film writer, director and producer Val Guest, known for his
eclectic career emphasizing British sci fi pics, died Wednesday, May 10
in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 94.

Guest was one of the directors and writers of the kooky James Bond
collaborative spoof "Casino Royale," and also worked in musicals,
comedies, thrillers and sci-fi. He is said to have made some of
Britian's best films as well as some of its worst. Best known for sci
fi thrillers including 1955's "The Quatermass Experiment" and
"Qatermass II," "The Abominable Snowman" and "The Day the Earth Caught
Fire," he also produced, directed and composed the score for 1960
beatnik oddity "Expresso Bongo."


Born in London, he started as an actor in the early 1930s before a
stint working in the London bureau of the Hollywood Reporter led to
contacts which helped him move into screenwriting and then directing in
the 1940s.


He teamed with popular British comedian Will Hay to write several
classic comedies including "Oh Mr. Porter," "Good Morning Boys!" and
"Ask a Policeman," and made his directing debut in 1943 with musical
comedy "Miss London Ltd." While directing "Miss Pilgrim's Progress" in
1950, he worked with actress Yolande Donland, whom he later married.


In later years, he turned out forgettable titles like "Diamond
Mercenaries," "Au Pair Girls" and "Confessions of a Window Cleaner"
before turning to directing TV shows such as "The Persuaders!"


He was survived by Donland, a son and a stepson.

Iain MacMillan, photographer: born Carnoustie, Angus 20
October 1938; died Dundee 8 May 2006.


Time was tight for the Beatles in the summer of 1969 whilst
they were recording in EMI's London studios in Abbey Road,
St John's Wood, and the photographer Iain MacMillan was told
that he could have the group for a few minutes during a
lunch break for the album cover shoot. Following a
suggestion from Paul McCartney, he sat on a tall ladder
outside the studio and took photographs of them striding
across the zebra crossing. By then, the Beatles, on the
verge of disbanding, had no uniformity in their looks.
Long-haired John Lennon was in a white suit, Ringo Starr in
a black frock coat, McCartney in a suit bought at Oxfam, and
George Harrison was in denim.


As the cover of Abbey Road, the photograph was instantly
iconic but no one could have predicted what was to follow,
as fans scrutinised the picture for clues that Paul
McCartney had died and had been replaced by a lookalike.
There were so many pointers on the album sleeve that it
looked deliberate: Paul was out of step with the others;
Paul was barefoot (apparently an Italian burial custom);
John was the minister, Ringo the undertaker and George the
gravedigger. The Volkswagen's numberplate was 281F and Paul
would have been 28 IF he were alive, and so on.


MacMillan was born in Carnoustie, Angus in 1938 and attended
school in Dundee. He became a trainee manager for Jute
Industries but loved photography and, in 1958, studied the
subject professionally. His first assignment was as a
photographer on a cruise. He did much technical photography
and then compiled a series of photographs of life in the
city for The Book of London (1966). It was through this work
that he met John Lennon, who invited him to photograph the
album cover for Abbey Road.


MacMillan went on to work with Lennon and his second wife,
Yoko Ono, on several of their projects. He photographed the
clouds for their album Live Peace In Toronto (1969) and was
also involved in the packaging of Sometime In New York City
(1972). For the picture single of "Happy Xmas (War Is
Over)", he skilfully morphed photographs of John and Yoko
together.


MacMillan's representative Raj Prem says, "Iain was too
gentle for the industry in which he worked and eventually he
preferred to teach photography instead. He was a much better
photographer than many of his contemporaries but he never
said a bad word about them and was always modest."


MacMillan parodied his own cover for the album Hinge and
Bracket at Abbey Road (1980) and in 1993 McCartney and
MacMillan revisited the Abbey Road zebra crossing for
photographs of McCartney with his sheepdog. This became a
cover of a CD called, appropriately enough, Paul Is Live.

Stanley Kunitz, a former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner
whose expressive verse, social commitment and generosity to young
writers spanned three-quarters of a century, has died. He was 100.

He died Sunday at his home in Manhattan, said his publisher, W.W.
Norton.

Kunitz had just turned 95 when appointed poet laureate in 2000, capping
a career that began 70 years earlier with the collection
“Intellectual Things” and later included a Pulitzer, a National
Medal of the Arts and — at age 90 — a National Book Award.

He served a single one-year term as U.S. poet laureate and was also the
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the precursor to poet
laureate, from 1974 to 1976.

His poems included tributes to nature and wildlife, such as “The
Snakes of September,” the traumatic memories of “The Portrait,”
in which he recalled his father’s suicide, and the spiritual journey
of “The Long Boat,” with his wish “To be rocked by the
Infinite!/as if it didn’t matter which way was home.”

His early work was more formal, more dependent on rhyme and meter, but
he anticipated his own evolution with the poem “Change,” with its
promise of “Becoming, never being.” Over time, his verse
simplified, crystalized, with Kunitz once observing that he had learned
to “strip the water out of my poems.”

In some ways, he maintained a quiet, contemplative life, working for
hours at night on an old manual typewriter, and by day nurturing his
beloved garden in Provincetown, Mass. But he also helped found two
writing centers and was a self-described pacifist who was a
conscientious objector in World War II, opposed the Vietnam War and
criticized the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

Shortly before his 100th birthday, “The Wild Braid” was published,
featuring poems, photographs of Kunitz in his garden and his
reflections on gardening, art and the end of life. “Death is
absolutely essential for the survival of life itself on the planet,”
he said, explaining his acceptance of mortality. “It would become
full of old wrecks, dominating the population.”

Fighting for acceptance
Born in Worcester, Mass., in 1905, Kunitz was raised by his mother, an
immigrant dressmaker from Lithuania. Kunitz’s father took his own
life before Kunitz was born, and his mother, as Kunitz wrote in “The
Portrait,” “locked his name /in her deepest cabinet/and would not
let him out/though I could hear him thumping.”

Kunitz was apparently destined for the literary life. He began to write
poetry in grade school, and was praised for it even then.

“My teachers were always saying things,” Kunitz recalled in a 2000
interview with The Associated Press. “They said, ’Stanley, you’re
going to be a poet.’ I was told that a dozen times. And so I began to
believe it.”

He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University and got his
master’s degree there. He expected to be invited to stay on as an
assistant, until a professor told him that the white Anglo-Saxon
students there would resent being taught by a Jew.

“That really almost broke my heart. And I think in the end it
probably did me a great favor,” Kunitz said. “Because, it prevented
me from becoming a completely preoccupied scholar.”

CHICAGO - Lou Carrol, the "man down in Texas" who gave then-vice presidential hopeful Richard Nixon the dog that inspired the famous Checkers Speech, has died. He was 83.

Carrol, a resident of the Chicago suburb of Barrington, died April 3.

Carrol was a salesman for Milton Bradley Co. in Texas in 1952 when he heard that Nixon, who was then a California senator, was looking for a dog for his two daughters.

He said he sent Checkers, the spotted cocker spaniel puppy, to Nixon on a whim.

Two months later, Nixon referenced the dog in a speech he later credited with allowing him to run for president.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was about to bump Nixon from the Republican ticket as his running mate because of a scandal - when Nixon appeared on national television with a touching speech about his integrity.

"One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't they'll probably be saying this about me, too," Nixon said in the speech. "We did get something, a gift, after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog."

"Our little girl Tricia, the 6-year-old, named it Checkers," he said.

Carrol later said of Checkers, "I had no idea she'd be such a big deal."

A memorial service for Carrol is scheduled for Friday in Barrington.