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  1. #2151
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian author whose beguiling stories of love and longing brought Latin America to life for millions of readers and put magical realism on the literary map, died on Thursday. He was 87.

    A prolific writer who started out as a newspaper reporter, Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece was “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” a dream-like, dynastic epic that helped him win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

    Garcia Marquez died at his home in Mexico City, where he had returned from hospital last week after a bout of pneumonia.

    Known affectionately to friends and fans as “Gabo,” Garcia Marquez was Latin America’s best-known and most beloved author and his books have sold in the tens of millions.

    Although he produced stories, essays and several short novels such as “Leaf Storm” and “No One Writes to the Colonel” early in his career, he struggled for years to find his voice as a novelist.

    He then found it in dramatic fashion with “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” an instant success on publication in 1967. Mexican author Carlos Fuentes dubbed it “Latin America’s Don Quixote” and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda also compared it to Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th century tour de force.

    Garcia Marquez’s novel tells the story of seven generations of the Buendia family in the fictional village of Macondo, based on the languid town of Aracataca close to Colombia’s Caribbean coast where he was born on March 6, 1927, and raised by his maternal grandparents.

    In it, Garcia Marquez combines miraculous and supernatural events with the details of everyday life and the political realities of Latin America. The characters are visited by ghosts, a plague of insomnia envelops Macondo, swarms of yellow butterflies mark the arrival of a woman’s lover, a child is born with a pig’s tail and a priest levitates above the ground.

    At times comical and bawdy, and at others tragic, it sold over 30 million copies, was published in dozens of languages and helped fuel a boom in Latin American fiction.

    A stocky man with a quick smile, thick mustache and curly hair, Garcia Marquez said he found inspiration for the novel by drawing on childhood memories of his grandmother’s stories – laced with folklore and superstition but delivered with the straightest of faces.

    “She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness,” he said in a 1981 interview. “I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself, and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.”

    Although “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was his most popular creation, other classics from Garcia Marquez included “Autumn of the Patriarch”, “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”.

    Tributes poured in following his death.

    “The world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers – and one of my favorites from the time I was young,” said U.S. President Barack Obama.

    “Your life, dear Gabo, will be remembered by all of us as a unique and singular gift, and as the most original story of all,” Colombian pop star Shakira wrote on her website alongside a photograph of her hugging Garcia Marquez.

    In Aracataca, a lone trumpet played on Thursday night as residents held a candlelight vigil for the man who made the town famous.

    MAGIC AND REALITY

    Garcia Marquez was one of the prime exponents of magical realism, a genre he described as embodying “myth, magic and other extraordinary phenomena.”

    His most prolific years coincided with a turbulent period in much of Latin America, where right-wing dictators and Marxist revolutionaries fought for power.

    Chaos was often the norm, political violence ripped some countries to shreds and life verged on the surreal. Magical realism struck a chord.

    “In his novels and short stories we are led into this peculiar place where the miraculous and the real converge. The extravagant flight of his own fantasy combines with traditional folk tales and facts, literary allusions and tangible – at times obtrusively graphic – descriptions approaching the matter-of-factness of reportage,” the Swedish Academy said when it awarded Garcia Marquez the Nobel Prize in 1982.

    Garcia Marquez admired Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and was also influenced by esteemed Latin American writers Juan Rulfo of Mexico and Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges.

    U.S. author William Faulkner inspired Garcia Marquez to create “the atmosphere, the decadence, the heat” of Macondo, named after a banana plantation on the outskirts of Aracataca.

    “This word had attracted my attention ever since the first trips I had made with my grandfather, but I discovered only as an adult that I liked its poetic resonance,” he wrote in his memoirs, “Living to Tell the Tale.”

    Fans will pay their last respects to him in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City on Monday and he will be cremated in a private ceremony.

    POLITICS, LITERARY FEUD

    Like many of his Latin American literary contemporaries, Garcia Marquez became increasingly involved in politics and flirted with communism.

    He spent time in post-revolution Cuba and developed a close friendship with communist leader Fidel Castro, to whom he sent drafts of his books.

    “A man of cosmic talent with the generosity of a child, a man for tomorrow,” Castro once wrote of his friend. “His literature is authentic proof of his sensibility and the fact that he will never give up his origins, his Latin American inspiration and loyalty to the truth.”

    The United States banned Garcia Marquez from visiting for years after he set up the New York branch of communist Cuba’s official news agency and was accused of funding leftist guerrillas at home.

    He once condemned the U.S. war on drugs as “nothing more than an instrument of intervention in Latin America” but he became friends with former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

    “He captured the pain and joy of our common humanity in settings both real and magical. I was honored to be his friend and to know his great heart and brilliant mind for more than 20 years,” Clinton said on Thursday.

    Despite his reputation as a left-leaning intellectual, critics say Garcia Marquez didn’t do as much as he could have done to help negotiate an end to Colombia’s long conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people.

    Instead, he left his homeland and went to live in Mexico. The damning criticism he leveled at his homeland still rings heavily in the ears of some Colombians.

    He was also a protagonist in one of literature’s most talked-about feuds with fellow Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru.

    The writers, who were once friends, stopped speaking to each other after a day in 1976 when Vargas Llosa gave Garcia Marquez a black eye in a dispute – depending on who one believes – over politics or Vargas Llosa’s wife.

    But Vargas Llosa paid tribute to Garcia Marquez on Thursday, calling him a “great writer” whose novels would live on.

    Politics and literary spats aside, Garcia Marquez’s writing pace slowed down in the late 1990s.

    A heavy smoker for most of his life, he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1999, although the disease went into remission after chemotherapy treatment.

    None of his latest works achieved the success of his earlier novels.

    One of those, “Love in the Time of Cholera,” told the story of a 50-year love affair inspired by his parents’ courtship.

    It was made into a movie starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem in 2007, but many critics were disappointed and said capturing the sensuous romance of Garcia Marquez’s novel had proved too tough a challenge.

    Garcia Marquez’s most recent work of fiction, “Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” got mixed reviews when it was released in 2004. The short novel is about a 90-year-old man’s obsession with a 14-year-old virgin, a theme some readers found disturbing.

    Garcia Marquez is survived by Mercedes Barcha, his wife of more than 55 years, and by two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

    When he was working, Garcia Marquez would wake up before dawn every day, read a book, skim through the newspapers and then write for four hours. His wife would put a yellow rose on his desk.

    His last public appearance was on his 87th birthday in March when he came out from his Mexico City home to smile and wave at well-wishers, a yellow rose in the lapel of his gray suit.

  2. #2152
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    My favorite writer. Goodbye, Garcia Marquez.

  3. #2153
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    Bill Driscoll - obituary

    Bill Driscoll was a prison governor awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for taking on an inmate who was wielding a knife




    Bill Driscoll, who has died aged 83, single-handedly took on an armed prisoner when governor of Walton jail, Liverpool, saving the life of a hostage being held in a barricaded cell.


    During the struggle Driscoll suffered a stab wound a fraction of an inch above his heart. It might have killed him had the blow not been partially obstructed by the thick material of his heavy winter overcoat.


    The incident took place on December 22 1976, after a 23-year-old inmate sharpened a metal bar to improvise a knife, then seized a workman who had come to paint part of the jail. Having blockaded the door with furniture, he demanded to see the governor.


    Driscoll was unwell, and resting at home; but he answered the call, and on arriving approached the cell in the prison’s punishment block. The offender was serving a 10-year sentence for robbery, and was known to have a history of violence.


    The only way to gain entry to the cell was to kick the door open, which Driscoll did. The inmate told him he would kill the hostage if the governor came any closer, but Driscoll ignored the threat, pleading with the man to surrender. Driscoll then launched himself directly between the inmate and the terrified workman. As the governor and the prisoner grappled hand-to-hand, three blows from the knife succeeded in piercing only Driscoll’s coat, but the fourth cut into his flesh

    Bleeding, the governor staggered to one side; as he did so, however, prison staff arrived on the scene, overpowered the attacker and released the hostage, who was unharmed. For the rest of his life Driscoll had a two-and-a-half inch scar on his chest. He was later presented with the weapon that inflicted it .

    His attacker appeared in court on Christmas Eve charged with attempted murder, and four months later was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court to 10 years’ imprisonment, to begin at the end of the term he was already serving.

    Driscoll was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal in the Birthday Honours of 1977, and went on to become, by 1980, principal of the Prison Service staff college at Wakefield in West Yorkshire.

    In 1983 he was appointed one of England’s regional directors of prisons, and by 1986 had responsibility for the north region .

    On his retirement from the service in December 1989, well-wishers included many of his former prisoners as well as colleagues. A man of strong Roman Catholic faith, Driscoll was an opponent of the death penalty — the experience of sitting with a condemned man in his cell (one of the last people to be hanged before executions were abolished in the 1960s) had a deep effect on him. He also cared greatly about the welfare and fair treatment of prisoners.

    Aubrey William Driscoll was born in Cardiff on April 16 1930 and educated at a local Roman Catholic school. His father died when he was young, and his only sibling, his sister Kathleen, died of tuberculosis when she was 26 and he 22.

    Bill’s early dreams of becoming a professional footballer were dashed when he suffered a serious knee injury, but he continued to enjoy riding and playing cricket.

    His National Service was spent in the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police, and he joined the Prison Service in England in 1952.

    He married, in 1950, Doreen Body, who survives him with their son and daughter

  4. #2154
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    Richard Broke - obituary

    Richard Broke was a television producer whose drama The Monocled Mutineer drew the ire of Norman Tebbit and the military




    Richard Broke, who has died aged 70, was a television producer with a flair for contentious drama; by bringing The Monocled Mutineer (1986) and Tumbledown (1988) to the screen, he found himself at the centre of a national debate on Britain’s military reputation.


    When The Monocled Mutineer (1986) was screened it caused furore amongst critics, politicians and military historians alike. The four-part BBC serial (written by Alan Bleasdale and starring Paul McGann) told the story of Percy Toplis, a deserter in the First World War. Norman Tebbit, then the Chairman of the Conservative Party, declared that the drama was further evidence of a Left-wing bias in the BBC.

    The programme’s historical adviser, Julian Putkowski, distanced himself, as Broke defended the “examples of dramatic licence” incorporated into the script



    Paul McGann in The Monocled Mutineer

    He addressed a more recent conflict with Tumbledown — about the Falklands War.

    The BBC film starred Colin Firth as Robert Lawrence, MC, a real-life Scots Guards officer left partially paralysed after the Battle of Mount Tumbledown during the advance on Port Stanley. The film was notable for showing apathy by government and Army officials to those wounded in the war; it also highlighted the protagonist’s gung-ho attitude to the campaign. Before it was screened, one of Lawrence’s fellow soldiers, Captain James Stuart, won a legal battle to have a sequence — which he believed identified him as an officer who encourages desertion — to be cut. Broke also handled casting complaints. Kenneth Branagh was initially to play the central role – “But Lawrence,” Broke explained, “who always saw himself as rather posh, was not happy.”

    The film’s director, Richard Eyre, said the film was intended to be “deeply political”. Broke’s ambitions, however, remained dramatic: “Tumbledown is not meant to be a documentary. It’s a play acted by actors.”

    With both productions his professional hunch paid off — The Monocled Mutineer and Tumbledown each won Bafta awards for Best Single Drama



    Colin Firth in Tumbledown

    Richard Broke was born in London on December 2 1943 and educated at Eton after which he worked in repertory theatre before joining the BBC.

    In the mid-Seventies he worked on the Play for Today series but his big break came with Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) — an eight-part serial for Southern Television starring Robert Hardy and Nigel Havers — on which he worked for two years. “I am still very proud of that,” he said, “it was a landmark for me.” The controversy surrounding The Monocled Mutineer five years later showed that Broke could weather a storm. “The government juggernaut was gunning for the BBC,” he said, “when The Monocled Mutineer was on the zebra crossing.”

    Throughout his career he brought veteran talents to his productions, coaxing swansong performances out of Alec Guinness, Alan Bates and Lauren Bacall. In 1985, in a rare excursion into screenwriting, he adapted Graham Greene’s last novel, Dr Fischer of Geneva — providing James Mason with his final role, as the titular misanthropic tycoon. Three years later Tumbledown took him back into controversial waters.

    As the executive producer of the BBC’s Screen One drama portfolio he was responsible for approximately 50 films. In 1992 he teamed up with the Hollywood director John Schlesinger for the award-winning A Question of Attribution, an adaptation of Alan Bennett’s play detailing the downfall of the traitor Sir Anthony Blunt.

    Three years later the pair collaborated again for a television take on Stella Gibbons’s novel Cold Comfort Farm (scripted by Malcolm Bradbury and starring Ian McKellen and Eileen Atkins).

    During the rest of the Nineties and into the Noughties he continued to work on single dramas and popular series, including Where the Heart Is, The Murder Room and Messiah: The Rapture.

    Richard Broke twice served on the Bafta Council. Although he became synonymous with difficult material it was, he said, strong emotional content that he was most interested in. “I never set out to make controversial drama,” he stated. “I would fall flat on my face if I did so.”

    He married, in 1988, Elaine Carew, who survives him with their two daughters.


    Richard Broke, born December 2 1943, died April 14 2014

  5. #2155
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    Alex Shear - obituary

    Alex Shear was a 'broker of nostalgia’ whose vast collection of memorabilia amounted to a history of modern America




    Alex Shear, who has died aged 73, was a self-described “broker of nostalgia” whose vast collection of memorabilia filled 11 storage facilities in three American states.

    Shear, an American expert in 20th-century design, was obsessed with what he called “the art of regular people”. This first took hold in the late 1960s, while he was working in product development with the department store JC Penney.

    Trawling the local flea markets for ideas that might help him rejuvenate the store’s line of kitchenware, he soon found himself drawn into avenues of personal interest.


    He collected 400 sets of kitchen curtains, then added used pots and pans and early Tupperware, before moving on to the toys of his early childhood. When his mother’s basement grew too cramped to accommodate his purchases he borrowed a barn, which soon filled up in turn with a medley of consumer goods and kitsch; everything from potato mashers (of which he owned about 500) and matchbooks (10,000) to a “Farrah Fawcett Make-Up Center” and a Turnpike Toll Gun, which fired coins from the car window into the toll-booth basket.


    With the royalties accumulated from the success of JC Penney’s revamped kitchen line, Shear set up as an independent textile and houseware designer; but increasingly his main enthusiasm lay in the objects he amassed. Not content to limit himself to a particular industry or collector’s fad, he chose instead to see his work as a history of modern America in “stuff”, a glimpse into the consumer mentality that both fascinated and possessed him in turn.

    Still, there were times when the contents of his home and warehouses would adopt a more explicitly personal slant. In 1971 Shear embarked on a lawsuit against a rival company for infringement of his kitchen designs – a successful but costly and exceedingly lengthy entanglement that took seven years to resolve. “I saw myself as a field-grade officer,”, he recalled, “and I started wearing khaki clothes to court and buying sculptures that soldiers in the trenches had made out of shell casings.”

    Later, as his marriage fell apart and he turned to collecting as a full-time occupation, he took particular interest in wedding memorabilia; one interviewer, visiting his Upper West Side apartment in the early 1990s, found a small army of bride and groom figurines, standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a chest

    By then Shear’s life project had begun to attract national attention, with exhibitions at the Manhattan Children’s Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and interviews on television. As the chief “nostalgia consultant” to his marketing company, Shear America, he courted the favour of brand-conscious corporations such as General Motors and Walt Disney, and worked as an adviser for Coca-Cola, helping it and others to assemble displays and travelling exhibitions.

    Admirers included the leading postmodern architect Robert Venturi, who had written of his desire “to gain insight from the commonplace” in his 1972 book Learning From Las Vegas. “Advertising is not a new thing. The mosaics in Byzantine churches are billboards selling Christianity,” Venturi said, explaining the peculiar fascination that Shear’s objects exerted. “His collection embodies that commercial dimension of our culture. In his own way, Alex is a genius”.

    Alexander Shear was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on March 5 1940. His parents were wholesale toy distributors, and, as he later recalled, “love came through stuff”. As a boy he had access to any item from the company warehouse, on the strict condition that it be returned in mint condition. The desire to own rather than borrow a toy would only be satisfied three decades down the line, with the purchase of a 1946 plastic Ford truck at a flea market for $1.

    Alex and his identical twin brother Ted attended school together, followed by Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

    After graduation Alex Shear joined the Army Reserves and spent six months as a “decontamination expert’s helper” before returning to New York and talking his way into a sales position at Macy’s department store. From there, with the help of two Army friends employed at JC Penney, he moved into product design.


    Though exceedingly voluble concerning his objects of desire, Shear’s understanding of his own motivations for collecting was hazy – illuminated, on occasion, by a flash of introspection. “Was it out of pain?” he once asked an interviewer, before supplying his own answer – “Well, it wasn’t out of pleasure.”

    Alex Shear was struck by a tour bus and killed while out walking in New York’s Upper West Side. In later years much of his collection was gathered in storage in Pennsylvania, ahead of plans to open a museum there.

    His two sons survive him

  6. #2156
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    NASA moon landing engineer John C. Houbolt dies at 95

    20 APRIL 2014

    An engineer whose contributions to the US space programme were vital to Nasa's successful moon landing in 1969 has died aged 95.

    As Nasa describes on its website, while under pressure during the US-Soviet space race, Mr Houbolt was the catalyst in securing US commitment to the science and engineering theory that eventually carried the Apollo crew to the moon and back safely.

    His efforts in the early 1960s are largely credited with convincing Nasa to focus on the launch of a module carrying a crew from lunar orbit, rather than a rocket from earth or a spacecraft while orbiting the planet.

    Mr Houbolt argued that a lunar orbit rendezvous, or lor, would not only be less mechanically and financially onerous than building a huge rocket to take man to the moon or launching a craft while orbiting the earth, but it also was the only option to meet President John F Kennedy's challenge before the end of the decade.

    Nasa describes "the bold step of skipping proper channels" that Mr Houbolt took by pushing the issue in a private letter in 1961 to an incoming administrator.

    "Do we want to go to the moon or not?" Mr Houbolt asks. "Why is a much less grandiose scheme involving rendezvous ostracised or put on the defensive? I fully realise that contacting you in this manner is somewhat unorthodox, but the issues at stake are crucial enough to us all that an unusual course is warranted."

    Mr Houbolt started his career with Nasa's predecessor in 1942, served in the Army Corps of Engineers and worked in an aeronautical research and consulting firm before returning to Nasa in 1976 as chief aeronautical scientist. He retired in 1985 but continued private consulting work.

    Mr Houbolt earned degrees in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned a doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich in 1957.

  7. #2157
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    Country Singer Kevin Sharp Dead at 43

    Country music singer Kevin Sharp has died from ongoing complications from past stomach surgeries and digestive issues, according to his official website.

    “We are saddened to announce the passing of Platinum Country Recording Artist Kevin Sharp on Saturday April 19, 2014 at 10:00 pm PST,” a message on the website said.

    Sharp was a blood cancer survivor, and died at his home in Redding, Calif.


    https://celebrity.yahoo.com/news/cou...211900765.html

    Prophetic lyrics, nice voice, too sad for my taste, but now it's even more poignant. Too young but finally relieved of a life long painful fight and he tried to do some good while he was here.


  8. #2158
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Former US boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter whose wrongful conviction for murder was immortalised in song and film has died at the age of 76.
    Carter spent 19 years in prison for murder and was released after it was determined he did not get a fair trial.

    His death in Toronto was confirmed by friend and caregiver John Artis, who said the former boxer had been battling prostate cancer for nearly three years. He died at home in Toronto, where he had been living since he was released from prison in 1985.

    Once a middleweight boxer who earned a world title fight in 1964, Carter is more well known for the turn his life took after he was arrested for a triple homicide in 1966, Reuters reports.

    That arrest, his imprisonment, and the ultimately successful battle to free him are recorded in the 1975 Bob Dylan song Hurricane and the 1999 film of the same name, which starred Denzel Washington as Carter.

    Born in 1937 in Clifton, New Jersey, Carter ran into trouble with the law as a teenager, serving custodial sentences for assault and robbery, and spending two years in the army.

    In his 1974 autobiography The Sixteenth Round Carter writes of his younger years: "The kindest thing I have to say about my childhood is that I survived it."
    In 1961, he channeled his energies into boxing, turning pro and earning a 1964 title match against world champion Joey Giardello, which Carter lost in a unanimous decision.

    His career was already in decline in 1966, when he was arrested and charged in a June triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey. He was convicted for the shootings along with John Artis, a hitch-hiker he had picked up on the night of the murders.
    Carter's case exploded into national consciousness in 1974, when two key witnesses recanted their testimony, sparking a series of stories by the New York Times, making him a cause celebre for the civil rights movement and prompting Bob Dylan to release Hurricane.

    He was retried in 1976 and convicted again.

    He was released for good in 1985, aided by a group of Canadian activists after a federal district judge ruled that his convictions "were predicated on an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure." Prosecutors decided not to pursue a third trial.

    Despite his release, some have raised doubts about his innocence, claiming the facts of his case still point to his guilt.

    After his release, Carter spent about 12 years as executive director of the Toronto-based Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. He broke acrimoniously with the group in 2004.

    After the break he continued to advocate for the wrongly convicted and also worked as a motivational speaker. He remained close friends with John Artis, the man with whom he was convicted.

    Carter is survived by two children from his first marriage to Mae Thelma.

  9. #2159
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    Myanmar democracy veteran Win Tin dies at 85



    Win Tin, a veteran of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement, has died at the age of 85.

    One of the founder members of the Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy, Win Tin was seen as highly influential in the push for reform in the South East Asian nation.

    He served 19 years in prison under Myanmar's military rulers for his activism, but was released in 2008.

    An NLD spokesman described him as a "great pillar of strength".

    "His demise at this important political juncture of transition is a great loss not only to the NLD but also to the country. We are deeply saddened,'' said Nyan Win.

    Win Tin had been in hospital with respiratory problems since 12 March, the Associated Press news agency reported.


    Blue shirt message

    Win Tin was a newspaper editor before his political activism led to his arrest in 1989 and subsequent incarceration in Yangon's Insein prison.

    Much of his time in prison was spent in solitary confinement and his sentence was twice extended



    Win Tin criticised some NLD members who were too reverential of Aung San Suu Kyi


    Freed in 2008, he continued to wear his blue prison shirt as an ongoing protest.

    "When I was released, there are about 500 or so political prisoners... behind the bars," he told the BBC in April 2013.


    "I said that I am going to wear it in the future. So long as these political prisoners are behind bars, I must wear this shirt and this uniform, the colour of the prison, you see, blue colour. I want to show my solidarity with them."

    Two years after Win Tin's release, Myanmar - formerly known as Burma - held its first elections in 20 years. The polls, nominally, aimed to replace military dictatorship with civilian rule, subsequently installing a military-backed civilian government led by former military officials.

    The NLD boycotted the polls, but then re-entered the political fold as the government embarked on a process of reform that saw some political prisoners freed and media censorship relaxed.

    The NLD now has a small presence in parliament and its key focus is the general elections due in 2015.

    After his release, Win Tin continued to work with the NLD despite ongoing health problems.

    He was not afraid to criticise members of his own party, in particular those he saw as being too reverential towards Aung San Suu Kyi, reports the BBC's Jonah Fisher from Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon.

    And while he welcomed the reform process - telling the BBC in March 2012 that he could see "light at the end of the tunnel" - he spoke out against too much of a conciliatory stance towards the military, for whom 25% of the seats in parliament are reserved.

    "We have to co-operate to some extent but we cannot compromise all the time," he told Reuters in April 2013.

    "So, I might be a very lonesome voice, not a loud voice, but I must say so all the time."

  10. #2160
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    RIP mate, the voice of racing in my formative years.



    Former BBC racing host Julian Wilson dies at 73

    BY PAUL EACOTT 3:00PM 21 APR 2014

    JULIAN WILSON, who headed the BBC's coverage as its TV racing correspondent for 32 years, died on Sunday night from cancer at the age 73.

    Wilson was the face of BBC racing and for much of that time the corporation had a near-monopoly of the top races. He was one of the race commentators for the Grand National from 1969 to 1991 and had editorial control over the BBC's mid-week broadcasts.

    He was involved in racehorse ownership for many years and struck lucky with Tumbledownwind, who was bought for him by his long-term trainer Bruce Hobbs for only 4,800gns as a yearling.

    Tumbledownwind, who ran in Wilson's although he owned only a half share, was a high-class two-year-old in 1977, winning at Glorious Goodwood. Wilson's other winners included Midnight Cowboy in an Ascot nursery in 1970 and the Lady Herries-trained Tykeyvor in the Bessborough Handicap at Royal Ascot in 1996.

    Wilson also had success as a racing manager, including for Sir Clement Freud and Italian restaurateur Walter Mariti. The latter won the Royal Hunt Cup with 50-1 shot Pontenuovo in 1990.

    He married his first wife, Carolyn Michael, in 1970 and they had a son, Thomas. After their divorce he married Alison Ramsay in 1981.

  11. #2161
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    Actor Craig Hill has died at the age of 88.
    Hill passed away on Monday (21Apr14) at his home in Barcelona, Spain, according to Spanish newspaper Ara. His death has been put down to natural causes.
    He was best known for his role as P.T. Moore, the co-owner of a helicopter chartering company, in the 1950s U.S. Tv adventure series Whirlybirds.
    Hill moved to Spain in 1965, and continued his acting career by appearing in a number of Western movies that he filmed throughout Europe, including Hands of a Gunfighter, Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer, Seven Pistols for a Massacre, Bury Them Deep, and My Horse, My Gun, Your Widow.
    The Los Angeles native also had roles in classic films including All About Eve, Cheaper by the Dozen, What Price Glory, and Detective Story.
    Hill is survived by his wife of nearly 24 years, Spanish fashion model and actress Teresa Gimpera.

  12. #2162
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
    Hands of a Gunfighter, Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer, Seven Pistols for a Massacre, Bury Them Deep, and My Horse, My Gun, Your Widow.
    Classic movie titles

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr Lick View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
    Hands of a Gunfighter, Fifteen Scaffolds for the Killer, Seven Pistols for a Massacre, Bury Them Deep, and My Horse, My Gun, Your Widow.
    Classic movie titles
    I might have been an extra in "Bury them deep".

    Home made version of course.


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    ^Liar!! That's some imagination you have..

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    Tony Marriott - obituary

    Tony Marriott was the co-creator of No Sex Please, We’re British, which became the West End’s longest-running comedy




    Tony Marriott, who has died aged 83, co-wrote the record-breaking farce No Sex Please, We’re British, which ran in the West End for more than 16 years, making it the longest-running comedy in the nation’s theatrical history.

    Marriott was a jobbing actor when he decided to turn to writing, first for radio and then for television, producing scripts for Z-Cars and the Gerry Anderson puppet series Fireball XL-5 in the 1960s. His first venture into stage farce, in collaboration with Alistair Foot, Uproar in the House, was a modest success and ran for two and a half years between 1967 and 1969.


    Before their smash hit No Sex Please, We’re British could open at the Strand Theatre in June 1971, Foot suddenly died of a heart attack. If that were not a bad omen in itself, the critical mauling that followed opening night might have proved fatal. “As glumly witless as its title”; “Forlorn porn”; “The most witless play in London”; and “We ought to be ashamed if this is the stuff we pay good money to see” were typical of the first-night notices






    In the event the show, which later transferred to the Garrick Theatre, ran in the West End for an astonishing 6,761 performances. Its closest rival for the longest-running British comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace, lasted a mere 1,337 performances.

    Ticket sales for No Sex Please, We’re British exceeded £8 million, although by the show’s 10th anniversary the producer, John Gale, said he had given up counting the number of actual tickets sold. The show’s investors received a return of 6,000 per cent.

    Originally titled The Secret Sex Life of a Sub-branch Bank Manager, it concerned a newlywed couple living above a shop who find themselves mysteriously receiving pornographic material through the post. The pictures are never seen, and the images are left to the audience’s imagination.

    Marriott and Foot managed to pull off a farce of clockwork precision. In a notoriously difficult genre, their script furnished all the traditional tools of the farceur’s trade – from doors to slam and hide behind to the clanking of inopportunely flushed lavatories.

    Despite the come-on title, No Sex Please, We’re British was (as one American observer noted) actually only “about as smutty as The Benny Hill Show”. But as No Sex Please ran and ran, it became something of a theatrical phenomenon. Marriott himself could hardly believe his own luck. “Let’s face it,” he admitted, “the thing’s a freak. I thought it would run for about six weeks.”

    Outside the Garrick towards the end of the show’s record-breaking run in 1987, the most prominently displayed quote was one from The Daily Telegraph reassuring playgoers that the entertainment within “is not pornographic”. But the very mention of “Sex” in the title offended the prudish, and a touring version of the show was banned by the local council at Eastbourne.

    Marriott believed the play’s success derived from “a Puritan streak in the British middle class”. Its core audience was a mixture of middle-class provincials, often in coach parties, and American tourists, who, as John Gale pointed out, found it accessible and innocent. “It’s not a great masterpiece. It doesn’t require great intellectual uplift. If they’ve been out sightseeing all day it’s easy to watch.”

    No Sex Please was a popular success in more than 50 countries around the world, although it failed in New York, closing after only six weeks in 1973. In Britain it launched the career of Michael Crawford, who played the bank cashier Brian Runnicles. Other members of the original London cast included Anthony Valentine, Linda Thorson and Evelyn Laye.

    The son of an Army officer, Anthony John Crosbie Marriott was born on January 17 1931 in London and brought up by his grandparents, a judge and his wife, because his parents were living in India. After Felsted School, where he boarded, he trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama but after getting work in various repertory companies he turned to scriptwriting, first for radio and then for popular 1960s television shows which also included The Avengers and Public Eye, an ITV series he created with Roger Marshall.

    An extravagantly theatrical figure, Marriott based himself at 9 Orme Court in Bayswater, the headquarters of Associated London Scripts, which had been formed by the comedy writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. He worked with Alistair Foot, who languished in a glass cubicle below stairs, and Mike Sharland (later his manager) whose office had once been a coal-hole. Grander comedy stars of the day, including Spike Milligan and Frankie Howerd, occupied more gracious quarters above.

    Although Marriott’s first collaboration with Foot, Uproar in the House, established them on the West End stage, their second effort, Sign Here Please, adapted from a Russian farce, closed almost immediately. After Foot’s death and the success of No Sex Please, We’re British, Marriott collaborated with John Chapman on another long-running West End hit farce, Shut Your Eyes and Think of England. He also worked with the former actor Bob Grant, best known as Jack Harper in the television sitcom On The Buses, on Home Is Where Your Clothes Are and several other touring shows.

    Marriott’s later work included a 1980s children’s animation for television, James the Cat, and Bill the Blue Bear, a play he wrote for his grandchildren.

    For many years Marriott lived at Osterley, west London, where he and his wife, who helped to run an animal charity, shared their home with rescue dogs and cats. He served as a magistrate at Brentford.

    Tony Marriott married, in 1956, Heulwen Roberts, a Welsh nurse, who predeceased him in 1999. Their son and two daughters survive him.


    Tony Marriott, born January 17 1931, died April 17 2014

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    Hero pilot John 'Des' Phillips who sank pride of Nazi fleet dies aged 90



    A HERO pilot from the Dambusters squadron who helped to sink the feared Nazi battleship Tirpitz during the Second World War has died at the age of 90.

    John “Des” Phillips joined legendary 617 Squadron as a 20-year-old in 1944, a year after the raids on dams in Germany which made it famous.

    He took part in later RAF attacks on U-boat pens, Nazi rocket sites in the Pas de Calais, and the Berchtesgaden mountain retreat of Adolf Hitler.

    But his claim to fame was the part he played in three raids on the Tirpitz, the sister ship to the Bismarck.

    A historian revealed how Des single-handedly prevented disaster for his crew during the third of the attacks.

    In his 1986 book, 617 Squadron: The Dambusters At War, Tom Bennett told how Des’s grossly overloaded Lancaster bomber struggled to get off the ground on their mission to sink the 53,000-ton enemy ship in 1944.

    He was proud of what he’d done during the war. He will be sorely missed
    Pam Vaughan, daughter
    He wrote: “The aircraft was taking off with 14,000lb overload when the port outer engine cut to less than half power.

    “Quickly, Des closed down the starboard outer engine and then gradually re-opened the throttle to bring all four engines into synchron[at]isation.

    “The swing was arrested, the aircraft straightened and managed to stagger off the ground.”

    Des flew on to complete the attack and his plane is believed to have scored a direct hit on the battleship off the coast of Norway.

    He married sweetheart Mary in 1948 and spent 15 years working in Aberporth, west Wales, at the Royal Aircraft Establishment.

    He moved to the Welsh village of Machynlleth, near Aberystwyth in 1967, where he lived until his death on April 14, having celebrated his 66th wedding anniversary days earlier.

    He leaves seven children, 19 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren and one great-great granddaughter.

    Daughter Pam Vaughan said: “He was proud of what he’d done during the war. He will be sorely missed.”

  17. #2167
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  18. #2168
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    I know she's not famous but I tip my hat to her. Even got the BEM from Her Maj, bless her.




    CHIP shop supergran Bettina Dawson has died aged 90 – after serving up half a million fish suppers in an amazing 77-year career.

    Bettina, hailed as the oldest fish fryer in the world, took ill on Friday as she worked at her beloved chippy and suffered a fatal stroke on the way to hospital.

    And her family and many friends in the Dumfriesshire village of Moffat still can’t quite believe she is gone.

    Her son Michael said: “We’re totally devastated and still in shock. It was so sudden and unexpected.

    “She was working in the chippy and took a dizzy turn but she kept insisting she was all right.

    “The paramedics almost had to drag her out to the ambulance. Even then, she was telling them she wasn’t ill.

    “Tragically, she had a massive stroke on the way to hospital. It looks like the turn in the chippy was a minor stroke. It was all so quick.”

    Michael said it felt like the whole community was in mourning for Betty, known to her many friends as Toosh. He added: “The support has been incredible. It’s kept us going. She meant that much to people.

    “We’ve been overwhelmed by cards, letters and calls and we can’t thank people enough.”

    Bettina started helping her Italian parents in the Moffat Chippy in 1936, when she was 13. And apart from a World War II stint in a munitions factory, she never left.

    At 90, Bettina was still working six nights a week. Her daughter Rosina, who was with her in the shop when she fell ill, told the Record last July: “She goes in during the morning to tidy up and is there until 10pm. I go away about 8pm and she stays on.”

    Asked for her secret, Bettina said with a smile: “I eat chips every day.”

    She added: “I don’t really know what keeps me going but I think it’s the customers. I like having a laugh with them.

    “I say there’s no charge for the comedy.”

    Bettina’s husband of 59 years, George, died eight years ago.

    She was awarded the British Empire Medal in the last New Year’s Honours list to recognise her incredible career and was due to meet the Queen in June.

    Bettina’s funeral takes place tomorrow at St Andrew’s Church in Moffat. She will be buried in the local cemetery.

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    Dan Colchico, former San Francisco 49ers DE, dies at 76
    Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 2:30 AM | Leave a Comment | Recommend | Print
    NFL.com

    The San Francisco 49ers say defensive end Dan Colchico has died at age 76. Colchico played in 67 games with 64 starts during six seasons, plus nine games for the Saints in 1969.

    He received the 1962 Len Eshmont Award, the team's most prestigious annual honor, for inspirational and courageous play representative of Eshmont.

    After an injury in 1965, Colchico stayed with the franchise for two more seasons, working one year in public relations and another as defensive line coach.

    Colchico is survived by his wife, Nancy, six children and 11 grandchildren.

    Copyright 2014 by The Associated Press
    Russia went from being 2nd strongest army in the world to being the 2nd strongest in Ukraine

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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    I know she's not famous but I tip my hat to her. Even got the BEM from Her Maj, bless her.




    CHIP shop supergran Bettina Dawson has died aged 90 – after serving up half a million fish suppers in an amazing 77-year career.

    Bettina, hailed as the oldest fish fryer in the world, took ill on Friday as she worked at her beloved chippy and suffered a fatal stroke on the way to hospital.

    And her family and many friends in the Dumfriesshire village of Moffat still can’t quite believe she is gone.

    Her son Michael said: “We’re totally devastated and still in shock. It was so sudden and unexpected.

    “She was working in the chippy and took a dizzy turn but she kept insisting she was all right.

    “The paramedics almost had to drag her out to the ambulance. Even then, she was telling them she wasn’t ill.

    “Tragically, she had a massive stroke on the way to hospital. It looks like the turn in the chippy was a minor stroke. It was all so quick.”

    Michael said it felt like the whole community was in mourning for Betty, known to her many friends as Toosh. He added: “The support has been incredible. It’s kept us going. She meant that much to people.

    “We’ve been overwhelmed by cards, letters and calls and we can’t thank people enough.”

    Bettina started helping her Italian parents in the Moffat Chippy in 1936, when she was 13. And apart from a World War II stint in a munitions factory, she never left.

    At 90, Bettina was still working six nights a week. Her daughter Rosina, who was with her in the shop when she fell ill, told the Record last July: “She goes in during the morning to tidy up and is there until 10pm. I go away about 8pm and she stays on.”

    Asked for her secret, Bettina said with a smile: “I eat chips every day.”

    She added: “I don’t really know what keeps me going but I think it’s the customers. I like having a laugh with them.

    “I say there’s no charge for the comedy.”

    Bettina’s husband of 59 years, George, died eight years ago.

    She was awarded the British Empire Medal in the last New Year’s Honours list to recognise her incredible career and was due to meet the Queen in June.

    Bettina’s funeral takes place tomorrow at St Andrew’s Church in Moffat. She will be buried in the local cemetery.

    She's just as entitled to be here as most of the others that I've seen here.

  21. #2171
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    I wonder who's laying claim to be the oldest fish fryer in the world now?

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    Bob Hoskins dead.

    Long Good Friday is one of my favorite films.

    RIP

  23. #2173
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    ^ he was a British gangster movie legend!
    RIP

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    an ology

  25. #2175
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    In a way I'm glad the pneumonia got him rather than a sad descent into the hell that is Parkinson's.

    RIP mate, brilliant actor.



    LONDON (AP) -- British actor Bob Hoskins, whose varied career ranged from Mona Lisa to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? has died at age 71.

    A family statement released today by agent Clair Dobbs said Hoskins died in a hospital after a bout of pneumonia.

    His wife Linda and children Alex, Sarah, Rosa and Jack, said: "We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Bob."

    A versatile character actor capable of menace, poignancy and Cockney charm, Hoskins appeared in some of the most acclaimed British films of the past few decades, including gangster classic The Long Good Friday.

    In 2012 Hoskins announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was retiring from acting.

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