NEW YORK -- Bob Simon, the longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent and legendary CBS News foreign reporter died suddenly tonight in a car accident in New York City.
The award-winning newsman was 73.
Simon's five-decade career took him through most major overseas conflicts spanning from the late 1960s to the present. He joined CBS News in 1967 as a New York-based reporter and assignment editor, covering campus unrest and inner city riots. Simon also worked in CBS News' Tel Aviv bureau from 1977-81, and worked in Washington D.C. as the network's State Department correspondent.
But Simon's career in war reporting was extensive, beginning in Vietnam. While based in Saigon from 1971-72, his reports on the war -- and particularly the Hanoi 1972 spring offensive -- won an Overseas Press Club award award for the Best Radio Spot News for coverage of the end of the conflict. Simon was there for the end of the conflict and was aboard one of the last helicopters out of Saigon in 1975.
He also reported on the violence in Northern Ireland in from 1969-71 and also from war zones in Portugal, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia and American military actions in Grenada, Somalia and Haiti.
Simon was named CBS News' chief Middle East correspondent in 1987, and became the leading broadcast journalist in the region, working in Tel Aviv for more than 20 years. In 1991, he won another OPC Award for reporting of the Gulf War. In 1996 he won one more OPC Award, a Peabody Award and two Emmy Awards for coverage of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. CBS News recieved an RTNDA Overall Excellence in Television Award in 1996 largely because of Simon's reporting from war-torn Sarajevo.
Moving into the 21st century, he was able to get two major interviews for 60 Minutes, including the first Western interview with extremist Iraqi cleric Muqtada al Sadr, and another with his Shiite Muslim rival, the Ayatollah al-Hakim, who was killed shortly after the interview.
Another Peabody Award came in 2000 for "a body of work by an outstanding international journalist on a diverse set of critical global issues." And a Lifetime Achievement Emmy was also awarded to him in 2003.
Simon also lent his skills to CBS's Olympics coverage. For the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, he reported on the failed attempt of Israel's secret intelligence organization, the Mossad, to avenge the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, for which he won an Emmy.
For the coverage of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he gave a 30-minute report on Louis Zamperini, an American Olympian who survived as a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese during World War II. The story won him a Sports Emmy.
Simon's most-recent piece for "60 Minutes" aired this past weekend, his conversation with Ava DuVernay, the director of the Academy Award-nominated film "Selma."
Simon was born on May 29, 1941, in the Bronx, N.Y., and was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in 1962 with a degree in history. He served as an American Foreign Service officer (1964-67). He was a Fulbright scholar in France and a Woodrow Wilson scholar.
He is survived by his wife, Françoise, and their daughter, Tanya, who is a producer for "60 Minutes" in New York.
CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, 1941-2015 - CBS News
I am sorry to learn that the gentleman is dead. It is a shame, however, that his obituary was written by a dope. Have you ever heard of anybody having "died peacefully" in a road accident ? Journalists do not think about the content because they feel that they are superior beings and they treat their readers as though they were idiots.Originally Posted by bsnub
Again, I am sorry to learn the sad news.
^Believe it says "suddenly".
After experiencing all that....then dying in a car accident. Very sad.
In a taxi rear-ended at what looked like high speed said one report. Although other reports indicate that he was in this vehicle which hit someone else.
Poor sod.
Yes, it does and I was asking if other people had seen something similar in which the word "peacefully" was used. The wording is dreadful. Are we to expect variations of time in future obituaries ? " Fred Bloggs died in a motor accident and took fifteen minutes thirty three seconds to die " ?
Peacefully is not the only other option.
If you are a friend or admirer then it would be nice to know it was sudden rather than drawn out which is the other possibility when someone has to be cut from wreckage and taken to hospital.
The flamboyant Steve Strange, lead singer of 1980s British pop band Visage, has died aged 55, his record label says.
Known as a pioneer of the New Romantic movement, Strange suffered a fatal heart attack in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt on Thursday.
"Steve died in his sleep of heart failure," said Marc Green, label manager at August Day Recordings.
"Steve's family, band members and friends are all distraught at this sudden news of his untimely death."
Born Steven John Harrington in south-east Wales, Strange became involved in music after attending a Sex Pistols concert in 1976.
Aged 15, Strange went to work for Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McClaren, and was later nicknamed the "Peacock Prince".
He went on to set up The Blitz Club in the London entertainment district of Soho, which became a focal point of the New Romantic movement of the early 1980s, influenced by British music legend David Bowie and associated with synthesizers and eccentric fashion.
A young Boy George worked in its cloakroom, and British bands Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Boy George's Culture Club got their start in the club before rising to fame.
"I remember David Bowie coming to the club because he had heard how bizarre it was," Strange told the Independent newspaper in 2000.
"It was about showing your creative side, and about showing that you'd taken time and effort in what you had created.
"It was about classic style and being outrageous, but done with an element of taste."
Formed in 1979, his band Visage had a breakthrough record with Fade To Grey, which topped charts in several countries and released two successful albums.
But a years-long addiction to heroin began after Strange sniffed a line of the drug after modelling at a Jean-Paul Gaultier show in Paris in 1985, thinking it was cocaine.
He described it years later as "the worst mistake that I ever made in my life".
Difficult times followed for Strange as he struggled with health difficulties and declining wealth, and he was convicted of shoplifting a child's toy and cosmetics in 2000.
More recently, Strange released a new album with Visage in 2013, and recorded a classical interpretation of Fade To Grey last year.
Visage lead singer Steve Strange dies aged 55 - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Janis Joplin's collaborator Sam Andrew who worked on the sixties hit Pieces Of My Heart dies at the age of 73 in his wife's arms
By HEIDI PARKER FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 23:29 GMT, 13 February 2015 | UPDATED: 00:06 GMT, 14 February 2015
Sam Andrew, who helped catapult Janis Joplin to mega stardom in the sixties, died on Thursday.
The musician was 73-years-old, according to TMZ.
The creator of such hits as Piece Of My Heart and Summertime had suffered a heart attack several weeks ago. When he passed, he was in his wife Elise Piliwale's arms.
Sam created the band that shot Janis to super stardom.
He founded the group Big Brother And The Holding Company. In 1966 he brought Joplin in.
Piece of My Heart and Summertime - both from 1968 - were the hits they worked on. And he played lead guitar.
When she left the band that same year, she took Sam with her.
I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! was the one album they recorded together.
After Joplin died in 1970, he came back to Big Brother. In the 1990s he was still touring with them.
Andrew attended the University Of San Francisco where he became involved with the San Francisco folk music scene of the early sixties.
He had one daughter, Mari Andrew, from his marriage to Suzanne Thorson.
^ What a month in jail for me during Sep/Oct 1970. When I got out I learned for the first time (no news allowed in jail) both Janis ans Jimi had passed. RIP Sam Andrew
Nutella, Ferrero Rocher owner Michele Ferrero dies aged 89
By AFP Published: February 15, 2015
ROME: Billionaire Michele Ferrero, who became Italy’s richest man thanks to the confectionary empire he built on his popular Nutella spread and Ferrero Rocher chocolates, died on Saturday at the age of 89.
“I have learnt with emotion of the passing of Michele Ferrero, a true entrepeneur, known and loved in Italy and abroad,” Italian President Sergio Mattarella said in a statement.
“Ferrero was a leading light in Italian business for many years, always managing to stay on trend thanks to his innovative products and his tenacious and cautious work. Italy remembers him with gratitude.”
It was Ferrero’s father, a smalltime pastry maker named Pietro Ferrero, who laid the groundwork for the Nutella recipe and famously added hazelnut to save money on chocolate.
But it was Michele Ferrero who turned the paste into the Nutella now known the world over.
The first pot of the addictive mix was made in Alba in northwest Italy in April 1964.
Ferrero now produces around 365,000 tonnes of Nutella every year in 11 factories around the world. The biggest market is Germany, followed by France and Italy.
The Ferrero group also makes Ferrero Rocher, Mon Cheri and Kinder chocolates and employs more than 22,000 workers. The group has an annual turnover of more than 8 billion euros ($9 billion).
Ferrero and his family are estimated by Forbes to hold Italy’s biggest fortune at $23.4 billion.
Ferrero’s son Giovanni became chief executive of the Ferrero group after his older brother Pietro died of a suspected heart attack while cycling in South Africa in 2011.
Mr. Jourdan as Prince Kamal Khan, the villain in the
1983 James Bond film Octopussy.
New York Times
February 15, 2015
By Terrence Rafferty
Louis Jourdan, a handsome, sad-eyed French actor who worked steadily in films and on television in Europe and the United States for better than five decades, as a romantic hero in movies like Gigi and later as a suave villain in movies like Octopussy, died on Friday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 93.
His death was announced by his official biographer, Olivier Minne.
Mr. Jourdan (his name was pronounced Lew-EE zhor-DON) was a reserved actor whose quiet manner lent his performances an aura of mystery and even of melancholy. His characteristic reticence served him well in both sympathetic and unsympathetic roles.
His durability was remarkable, considering that his European screen career as well as his American one began inauspiciously.
Born Louis Henri Gendre in Marseilles on June 19, 1921, Mr. Jourdan attended acting school in Paris and was quickly tapped for a role in the film Le Corsaire, directed by Marc Allégret. But the outbreak of World War II interrupted the production, and the movie was never completed.
He appeared in several films during the Occupation, often directed by Mr. Allégret, for whom he also sometimes worked as an assistant director. But after his father, a hotelier, was arrested by the Gestapo, Mr. Jourdan joined the Resistance another activity for which his reserve must have proven useful.
After the war, Mr. Jourdan came to the United States and attracted the attention of the producer David O. Selznick, who cast him in the courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947), very much against the wishes of the director, Alfred Hitchcock.
His character, a slightly sinister valet suspected of murdering his employer, was originally conceived as a rough, earthy type, which Mr. Jourdan clearly was not. Mr. Hitchcock referred to him as a pretty-pretty boy and complained that his casting destroyed the whole point of the film. (There appears to have been no lingering personal antagonism: Mr. Jourdan was among the mourners at Mr. Hitchcocks funeral in 1980.)
Mr. Jourdan was more fortunate in his next Hollywood assignment, playing a concert pianist who seduces and abandons Joan Fontaine in Max Ophulss elegant romantic tragedy Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948). It was a role that allowed him to use his silky, hooded charm to remarkably ambiguous effect, and to create, for one of the few times in his long career, a truly complex character a hollow man who comes, in the end, to understand how much his hollowness has cost him.
The next year he won the important role of Rodolphe, the heroines lover, in Vincente Minnellis film version of Madame Bovary. For the next decade he appeared in many high-profile, big-budget studio pictures, usually performing the somewhat limited function of embodying Hollywoods idea of the dashing, cultured, worldly European man. His greatest success in this mode came when he starred opposite Leslie Caron in Mr. Minnellis musical Gigi (1958), a major hit that won nine Academy Awards, including best picture. (Mr. Jourdan was not nominated, for this or for any other movie in his career; Gigi did, however, earn him a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy or musical.)
Between Hollywood jobs, Mr. Jourdan would occasionally return to Europe to make films, among them Jacques Beckers Rue de lEstrapade (1953). And in 1954 he took a shot at Broadway, playing the lead in a stage adaptation of André Gides novel The Immoralist. Although he received good reviews, his performance was partly eclipsed by that of a striking young actor in the supporting cast: James Dean.
After the 1950s, the Continental types that had been Mr. Jourdans bread and butter fell out of favor in American movies. For the last 30 years of his performing life Mr. Jourdan still attractive and still impeccably dignified, but looking a bit more world-weary with every passing year was cast more often as a Prince of Darkness than as Prince Charming. He played the oily Dr. Anton Arcane in Wes Cravens Swamp Thing (1982) and its 1989 sequel, The Return of Swamp Thing, and the evil Kamal Khan, from whom James Bond is obliged to save the world, in Octopussy (1983).
Mr. Jourdan had the opportunity to play more nuanced villains on television. He was a guest murderer on Columbo in 1978, a year after he gave a memorably seductive and chilling performance in the title role of Count Dracula on the BBC.
He was named as a chevalier, or knight, of the French Legion of Honor in 2010.
Mr. Jourdan was, by all accounts, well liked in Hollywood, but he kept his private life private. In 1946 he married Berthe Frederique; they remained married until her death last year. The couple had one child, Louis Henry Jourdan Jr., who died of a drug overdose in 1981, at 29. A brother, Pierre Jourdan, who was an actor and a theater director in France, died in 2007.
Louis Jourdan made his last appearance on screen in 1992, in the caper film Year of the Comet. He played the bad guy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/mo...ead-at-93.html
Its My Party Singer-Songwriter Lesley Gore Dies At 68
February 16, 2015 12:27 PM
NEW YORK (AP) A singer-songwriter who topped the charts in 1963 with her epic song of teenage angst Its My Party and followed it up with the hits Judys Turn to Cry and You Dont Own Me has died. Lesley Gore was 68.
According to her partner of 33 years, Gore died Monday of cancer at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan.
Brooklyn-born and New Jersey-raised, Gore was discovered by Quincy Jones as a teenager and signed to Mercury Records.
Gores other hits include Shes A Fool, Thats the Way Boys Are and Maybe I Know. She co-wrote with her brother, Michael, the Academy Award-nominated Out Here On My Own from the film Fame.
She also played Catwomans sidekick in the cult TV comedy Batman.
(İ Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
^ To be a teenager in those days was a real privilege, thanks to pop singer-songwriters like Ms. Gore. RIP
Bummer! Only 68?
the Indo version was ''it's Merparti and I'll die if I want too''
Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr Spock in science fiction series Star Trek, has died. He was 83.
The actor, who won worldwide fame as the ever-logical, half-Vulcan first officer of the Starship Enterprise, passed away on Friday morning at his home in Los Angeles.
His unflappable character's blessing, "Live long and prosper", became a catchphrase for generations of devoted fans.
Nimoy's death was confirmed to the New York Times by his wife, Susan Bay Nimoy.
The former smoker, had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Leonard Nimoy: Star Trek's Mr Spock Dies
Fascists dress in black and go around telling people what to do, whereas priests... more drink!
^Wow...I doubt there will be any arguing over his fame for this thread...
RIP, Leonard...A legend, indeed...
Bit of a shame its only in this thread. Such an iconic person really deserves their own thread.
RIP Leonard, and thanks.
RIP Leonard. Thanks for all the years of Star Trek
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