AP - Li Ximing, Beijing’s Communist Party boss during the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests, has died at 82, Chinese state media reported Tuesday.
AP - She died just how she wanted to singing on stage for a good cause. And her recorded songs wafted out of taxis and radios, as fellow Africans struggled with their grief at her passing.
AP - Mieczyslaw Rakowski, Poland’s last communist-era party chairman and prime minister, has died, Polish media and officials said Saturday. He was 81.
Reuters - Former world 400 meters record-holder and twice Olympic medalist Larry James has died of cancer, USA Track & Field said on Friday.
AP - Literary and cultural critic John Leonard, an early champion of Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and many other authors, and so consumed and informed by books that Kurt Vonnegut once praised him as “the smartest man who ever lived,” has died at age 69, his stepdaughter said Thursday.
AP - Rosella Hightower, an Oklahoma-born ballerina who became a leading figure in the European dance world and founded a major ballet school in France, has died. She was 88.
AP - Michael Crichton, the million-selling author who made scientific research terrifying and irresistible in such thrillers as “Jurassic Park,” “Timeline” and “The Andromeda Strain,” has died of cancer, his family said. Crichton died Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 66 after privately battling cancer.
AP - Cecil Stoughton, the White House photographer who shot the iconic image of Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, has died. He was 88.
AP - Veteran Indian filmmaker B.R. Chopra, whose Bollywood career spanned five decades, died at home on Wednesday. He was 94.
AP - Jimmy Carl Black, drummer, vocalist and self-anointed “Indian of the group” of Frank Zappa’s The Mothers of Invention, has died at age 70.