Obituaries

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Dennis Edward (Denny) Freeman[1] (August 7, 1944 – April 25, 2021) was an American Texas and electric blues guitarist.[2] Although he is primarily known as a guitar player, Freeman also played piano and electronic organ, both in concert and on various recordings. He worked with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, Bob Dylan, Angela Strehli, Lou Ann Barton, James Cotton, Taj Mahal, Barry Goldberg and Percy Sledge amongst others.[3][4]

Freeman started his career as co-lead guitarist in the Cobras with Stevie Ray Vaughan.[2] He became a founding member of Southern Feeling in 1972, along with W. C. Clark and Angela Strehli.[6] He later recorded with Lou Ann Barton.[2] Freeman lived and played with both Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He played piano on Jimmie Vaughan's first solo tour, and on a James Cotton album. At Antone's nightclub in the early 1980s, Freeman was a member of the house band and backed Otis Rush, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, and Lazy Lester.[1]
After touring with Jimmie Vaughan in the mid 1990s he toured with Taj Mahal until 2002. A songwriter on his five mainly instrumental albums, Freeman lived again in Los Angeles from 1992 until 2004.[1] Freeman played with Bob Dylan's backing band between 2005 and 2009.[7] Dylan's album, Modern Times was recorded with Dylan's then touring band, including Freeman, Tony Garnier, George G. Receli, Stu Kimball, plus multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron.[8] During a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan spoke about his current band:

Quote:This is the best band I've ever been in, I've ever had, man for man. When you play with guys a hundred times a year, you know what you can and can't do, what they're good at, whether you want 'em there. It takes a long time to find a band of individual players. Most bands are gangs. Whether it's a metal group or pop rock, whatever, you get that gang mentality. But for those of us who went back further, gangs were the mob. The gang was not what anybody aspired to. On this record (Modern Times) I didn't have anybody to teach. I got guys now in my band, they can whip up anything, they surprise even me.[9]
— Bob Dylan, August 2006, Rolling Stone

Clem Burke played the drums on Freeman's solo offering, Twang Bang (2006).[10]

Freeman was inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame in 2009.[11]
Freeman died on April 25, 2021, in Austin, Texas. He was 76, and was diagnosed with abdominal cancer several weeks before his death.[3][12]


More at Wikipedia.

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Bobby Unser, 87, three-time champion of the Indy 500.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Unser

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Anthony Payne, composer and musicologist. He made a credible completion of the third symphony of Edward Elgar.



Anthony Edward Payne[1] (2 August 1936 – 30 April 2021) was an English composer, music critic and musicologist. He is best known for his completion of Edward Elgar's third symphony, titled Edward Elgar: The Sketches for Symphony No. 3 elaborated by Anthony Payne; the work has subsequently gained wide acceptance into Elgar's oeuvre and granted him future commissions of a similar nature. Among these were other completions of works by Elgar as well as orchestrations of Elgar, Finzi and Delius works. 

Born in London, Payne was interested in composing music from an early age. After studying at Dulwich College under Stanley Wilson, and then at Music at St Cuthbert's Society, Durham University, he spent a period as a freelance musicologist.[2] Since the mid-1960s when he composed his Phoenix Mass, he has received commissions for new works from several important ensembles, including the English Chamber Orchestra and the Nash Ensemble.[3] Three major orchestral works: The Spirit's Harvest (1985), Time's Arrow (1990), Visions and Journeys (2002) and Of Land, Sea and Sky (2016) were all premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at The Proms in London. He has also composed a Concerto for Orchestra (1974) and other orchestral pieces, as well as chamber, instrumental and choral works. His String Quartet No. 2 (2010) won the Chamber category of the 2011 British Composer Awards.[4]


In 1988 he co-founded the "questing young ensemble"[5] Jane's Minstrels with his wife, the soprano Jane Manning.[3] Amongst his ensemble pieces, A Day in the Life of a Mayfly and Symphonies of Wind and Rain (composed for and recorded by Jane's Minstrels) are considered particularly effective. Although Payne's realisations of several works by Elgar have brought him considerable notice and acclaim, he has also composed a Frederick Delius paraphrase entitled Spring's Shining Wake (1981) and has transcribed songs by Peter Warlock for Jane's Minstrels.[1]
Payne's realisation of the sketches for Edward Elgar's Third Symphony took several years to complete. When Elgar died in 1934, he left more than 130 pages of incomplete score for a third symphony. Although initially reluctant to allow anyone to use this material (Elgar himself had expressed a wish that no-one should "tinker" with the sketches), the Elgar family realised that in 2005 the sketches would come out of copyright. They therefore approved Payne's elaboration of the sketches, on which he had been working and lecturing intermittently since 1993, and he subsequently completed the piece.[3] Payne's version of the symphony was first performed in 1998 to immediate acclaim, and has received numerous subsequent performances and several recordings.[2][1]

Payne subsequently also composed a version of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6 from Elgar's incomplete sketches for the work, which received its first performance under the baton of Sir Andrew Davis at a Prom concert on 2 August 2006 – Payne's 70th birthday. During a radio interview on the BBC's Today on 28 April 2006, when he was asked about the March, Payne said that he had composed about 43% of the music and carried out all of the orchestration, amounting to well over half the piece. In the same interview he said that to carry out his completions he felt that he had to try to "become" Elgar, in much the same way that an actor would assume a stage role.[1]
Payne was awarded an Elgar Medal by the Elgar Society, and held honorary doctorates from the universities of Birmingham, Durham and Kingston.[2] He was a fellow of the Royal College of Music, where he was arts research fellow for two years.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Payne

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[/url][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Murray_Free]Helen Murray Free(February 20, 1923 – May 1, 2021) was an American chemist and educator. She is most known for revolutionizing many self-testing systems for diabetes and other diseases while working at Miles Laboratories, which is now Ascensia Diabetes Care. The pioneering of the dip-and-read strips, which are still used to this day, allowed for testing to be more convenient and efficient, enabling doctors and patients to no longer be reliant on laboratories for results.

Free's career search began even before completing her college education. During her final year at Wooster, she took interest in the Koppers Chemical Company in Orrville, Ohio. However, she was put down after hearing that her job would be testing the creosote that fence posts were dipped in before they were sold to local farms. She then turned to apply for a research fellowship at the Mellon Institute (which is now Carnegie Mellon University). While waiting to hear back, one of her chemistry professors arranged an interview for her at Miles Laboratories. She was offered a position, however, after hearing about what her job would entail, she was no longer interested and was set on doing research. With no response from the Mellon Institute, she reluctantly took the offer from Miles.[4] Upon graduating from Wooster, Free immediately began working as a quality control chemist for Miles Laboratories (known as the creators of Alka-Seltzer), which involved testing the quality of ingredients in the company's line of vitamins[3] An offer from the Mellon Institute eventually came after a few weeks she accepted the offer from Miles, but she was unfortunately locked into her position by then.[4] Her aspiration to do research, however, was ultimately fulfilled. When Alfred Free had a position open in his biochemistry research group, she interviewed and filled the position.[5] Little did she know that they would become lifelong research partners.[3] They would marry two years later in 1947.[3]


Originally they researched different antibiotics before they moved on to dry reagent systems. The first thing Alfred and his team were tasked with was further refining Clinitest to make it more sensitive.[3] Clinitest was a tablet that measured glucose levels in the urine of diabetic patients when a diluted solution of urine was subject to a tablet. A resulting color change would be able to determine the corresponding glucose levels of the patient. The team also developed the Acetest, another tablet test for diabetes.[5][6] Continuing with this trend of enabling clinical tests to be carried out in tablet form, the team created Ictotest, which tested for hepatitis A. This test was able to chemically detect the presence of bilirubin in urine, which was indicative of carrying the disease.[4]



It was from developing the Ictotest that got the Frees thinking. Free worked with her husband to make the tests even more convenient than tablets by creating strips.[3] The duo introduced Clinistix (the famous “dip-and-read” test) in 1956. It was the first dip-and-read diagnostic test strip for monitoring glucose in urine.[6] They then worked to develop other strips that could test for key indicators of diseases, such as proteins and ketones.[7] Eventually, they were able to create Multistix, which enabled a urine analysis that combined multiple tests into one strip.[4] They did this by making an impermeable barrier between the multiple reagents on the strip.[7] Several other testing strips were developed and added to the market, including Uristix, Ketostix, Dextrostix, Labstix, and the still-current product, Multistix.[5][1]



Free moved into the Growth and Development Department in 1969, and she eventually became the director of Specialty Test Systems seven years later. She was Director of Marketing Services for the Research Products Division when Bayer Diagnostics acquired Miles in 1978.[8][9]



Free also earned an Master of Arts in Management (Health Care Administration) from Central Michigan University (1978), and served as an Adjunct Professor of Management at Indiana University South Bend.[10]
By 1975, Free had earned seven patents for her improvements in medical and clinical urinalysis testing. In that year, she and her husband co-authored their second book, Urinalysis in Laboratory Practice, which is still a standard work in the field.[10] She retired in 1982, but continued to work as a consultant for Bayer Diagnostics in Elkhart, Indiana.[2]

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Del Crandall, the last surviving member of the Boston Braves. He was a catcher, and a very good one, for the great Braves teams of the late 1950's that included Hank Aaron, Eddie Matthews, Joe Adcock, Warren Spahn, Johnny Sain, and Lew Burdette. After his playing days were over he was a manager.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_Crandall

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(01-03-2021, 05:30 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Just a reminder: if you think that 2020 was a bad year for the loss of baseball stars... you are right.

Baseball Lost A Team Of Legends This Year
By Howard Megdal

Filed under MLB


2020 has been a difficult year of loss in every corner of the world. It’s also been keenly cruel to the collective memory of Major League Baseball — and its best players. To be sure, we lose icons in the sport every year. But the sheer number and depth of the talent among those who died in 2020 is overwhelming.

In the span of just a few weeks, not just one but two iconic St. Louis Cardinals died: Bob Gibson and Lou Brock. These were defining members of many Cardinals championship teams as players who stayed within the St. Louis family for decades after their careers ended. They were routinely included in opening day festivities at Busch Stadium, wearing their red jackets.

We lost Tom Seaver, the defining Met. Joe Morgan, perhaps the best second baseman to ever play the game, with the Cincinnati Reds and numerous other teams. Whitey Ford, big game pitcher par excellence for the New York Yankees. Al Kaline: Mr. Tiger. And just Saturday, we lost Phil Neikro, the master of the knuckleball.

That’s seven Hall of Fame players. To put it in perspective, we lost seven Hall of Famers combined from 2016 to 2019: Frank Robinson in 2019; Willie McCovey and Red Schoendienst in 2018; Roy Halladay, Jim Bunning and Bobby Doerr in 2017; and Monte Irvin in 2016.

The last time as many as four Hall of Famers died was 2010, when Ron Santo, Robin Roberts, Bob Feller and Sparky Anderson all passed — though Anderson had earned induction as a manager, not a player. Most years since the turn of the century, it’s one or two Hall of Famers; in 2004 and 2008, it was none.

What also separates 2020, though, is the sheer depth of talent we lost. And that’s been what continues to hit home for me: the list includes longtime stars, All-Stars and postseason heroes beyond those who were inducted into Cooperstown. To make sense of it all, I wanted to think of it in baseball terms, to appreciate just how much player production came from players who have died in 2020.

This year has seen the deaths of 15 hitters and nine pitchers with at least 10 career wins above replacement,1 including 10 above 40 WAR. Compare that to 2019: eight hitters, six pitchers above 10 WAR, just three players above 40. Or 2018: eight hitters, seven pitchers at or above 10 WAR, with McCovey, Schoendienst and Rusty Staub the only three above 40.

This is no mere calculation. Every hit, every strikeout, every diving catch is remembered by thousands of people, those who watched or listened to it, those who witnessed it in person. So to truly comprehend the number and ability of the baseball players we lost in 2020, I’ve compiled a 26-man roster of those who died this year. Say what you will about the Dodgers: This is a team that I think could beat anyone.

Hitters
Starting lineup
C Hal Smith, 4.2 career WAR, 1955-64: Smith enjoyed a distinguished decade-long career catching for the Orioles, Kansas City Athletics, Pirates, Houston Colt .45s and Reds. He played a key role for the 1960 World Champion Pirates, slashing .295/.351/.508 for the eventual winners, and served as Houston’s catcher in the team’s very first game in 1962. He homered, too, as the Colt .45s won 11-2. Smith finished his career with three double-digit home run seasons, a slash line of .267/.317/.394, and yet somehow, on this team, he’s probably the No. 8 hitter.

1B Bob Watson, 28.3 WAR, 1966-84: Among the many distinguished, if not quite Hall of Fame worthy, players on this team, Watson made a pair of All-Star teams and earned MVP votes in three different seasons. The longtime Astro — who also saw time with the Red Sox, Yankees and Braves — drove in 100 runs twice. 1975 is an example of his typical consistency: a .324/.375/.495 slash line, with 18 home runs and an OPS+ of 149.

2B Joe Morgan, 100.5 WAR, 1963-84: The most valuable everyday player and owner of the second-best WAR on the roster, Morgan defined the position of second base for more than two decades. He made 10 All-Star teams, captured two MLB MVPs as the best player on the Cincinnati Reds dynasty of the mid-1970s, and did essentially everything well on a baseball field. His career slash line of .271/.392/.427 understates his offensive greatness, with much of that raw production coming during the offensively challenged 1960s. His OPS+ of 132 is impressive for any position, but it’s fourth all-time among the 177 primary second basemen with at least 1,000 games played in MLB history.

3B Dick Allen, 58.8 WAR, 1963-77: From a legacy perspective, this hurts most of all. Allen is, by all rights, a Hall of Famer, but his reputation of being difficult — something our 2020 eyes must see through the lens of being an outspoken Black man in Philadelphia in the 1960s — kept him from enshrinement. He looked set to get enough votes from this year’s Golden Era Veterans’ Committee, but COVID-19 pushed back by a year that meeting, which is held in person. Now, if and when the call is made to honor a career featuring a remarkable 156 career OPS+, the NL Rookie of the Year award, seven All-Star seasons and an AL MVP award, it will be up to the rest of us to stress how long overdue it was.

SS Tony Fernández, 45.3 WAR, 1983-2001: Fernández falls just shy of Hall of Fame enshrinement, according to Jay Jaffe, the dean of such evaluations, but had a tremendous career all the same. He made five All-Star teams and won four Gold Gloves at the most important defensive position, with a .288/.347/.399 career slash line. He stole 20 bases or more in seven seasons and played on five different postseason teams — with .327/.367/.420 career production in the playoffs.

LF Lou Brock, 45.4 WAR, 1961-79: The prototype for the speedy leadoff hitter, Brock stole 938 bases, made six All-Star teams and served as a fixture for three NL pennant-winning teams in St. Louis, including the World Series winners in 1964 and 1967. Brock’s raw slash line of .293/.343/.410 is also underrated because of the era — he led the NL in doubles and triples in 1968, and his ability to collect hits never disappeared. He finished with a .298 average over the final decade of his career, and in his final season at age 40, he hit .304.

CF Jim Wynn, 55.8 WAR, 1963-77: To get a sense of how great Jimmy Wynn was, consider that there are three Hall of Fame hitters on this roster, and yet Wynn’s WAR ranks third among them in the group, ahead of Brock. Wynn would have been adored by the sabermetric crowd — he produced a park-adjusted OPS+ of 129 — but a low batting average compounded by the era in which he played for much of his time made for a career slash line of just .250/.366/.436. (For context: Carlos Beltran, playing in a much more hitting-friendly period, finished with a raw slash line of .279/.350/.486, but his OPS+ was just 119.) Even so, Wynn cleared 30 home runs in three seasons, made three All-Star teams and would probably hit cleanup in this stacked lineup.

RF Al Kaline, 92.8 WAR, 1953-74: Mr. Tiger, one of the greatest to ever play the game, was an 18-time All-Star with 10 Gold Gloves. By WAR, he’s the fourth-best right fielder in the history of the game, trailing only Hank Aaron, Mel Ott and Roberto Clemente. His greatness started early — a batting title at age 20 — and didn’t wane for decades, with Kaline hitting .379/.400/.655 in the 1968 World Series for the Tigers in a win over the Cardinals. Kaline would be the three hitter in this lineup and a formidable figure on any team.

Bench
3B Tony Taylor, 23.2 WAR, 1958-76: Taylor made both All-Star teams in 1960 (they played twice back then!), served as a key member of some good and many not-so-good Phillies teams and eventually enjoyed three — yes, three — Tony Taylor Days in Philadelphia. Don’t let them fool you about Philly fans.

OF Claudell Washington, 19.6 WAR, 1974-90: A two-time All-Star and perfect fourth outfielder who played all three positions.

2B Frank Bolling, 16.9 WAR, 1954-66: Bolling was an elite fielder at second base with some power and was an All-Star in 1961 and 1962.

OF/1B Jay Johnstone, 16.5 WAR, 1966-85: A lefty bat off the bench who could play all three outfield positions along with first base.

IF Horace Clarke, 15.7 WAR, 1965-74: Clarke was a defining Yankee, to fans of a certain age, who could play second, third and short.

C Ed FitzGerald, 1.4 WAR, 1948-59: FitzGerald was a defense-first backup catcher.

2B Glenn Beckert, 15.6 WAR, 1965-75: A four-time All-Star and a Gold Glove winner at second base who could fill in around the infield or outfield.

Honorable mention: 1965 World Series hero OF Sweet Lou Johnson, 2B Damaso Garcia and 3B/SS Kim Batiste, who did this in the first playoff game I ever attended.

Pitchers
Rotation
SP Tom Seaver, 106 WAR, 1967-86: The Franchise was easily the best player in New York Mets history, and there’s an argument for him as the best pitcher in MLB history, too. Seaver made 12 All-Star teams and won three Cy Young Awards, along with five other top-five finishes in the Cy Young voting. His WAR ranks seventh all-time for pitchers, and five of the six ahead of him pitched decades before, during a pre-integrated MLB period, while Roger Clemens is the other — with his own complicated legacy. This is a deep, talented staff, but Tom Seaver gets the ball in Game 1 of any series it would play.

SP Bob Gibson, 81.7 WAR, 1959-75: A No. 2 starter only on this team, really, Gibson is 25th in WAR among all pitchers, meaning two of the top 25 in the history of the game died this year. Gibson might be ahead of Seaver if we’re purely talking 1968, when Gibson set the record in the live-ball era for single-season ERA at just 1.12. He was a nine-time All-Star and two-time Cy Young Award winner, and he won nine Gold Gloves. He also may have pitched the single most dominant World Series game ever.

SP Phil Niekro, 97 WAR, 1964-87: It is easy to get lost in the sheer magnitude of Niekro’s productivity — fourth all-time in innings pitched, with only Cy Young, Pud Galvin and Walter Johnson ahead of him — or the novelty of his pitch, the knuckleball, and miss just how great Niekro was at his best. He had five top-six Cy Young Award vote finishes, spreading them out over three different decades. He fielded his position extraordinarily well over his entire career — he won five Gold Gloves, the last coming in 1983, when he was 44 years old. He led the league in ERA and in winning percentage, but not in the same year — those two things happened 15 years apart! Niekro’s pitch, and his mastery of it, helped propel his singular career. And sadly, not only is he gone, but the knuckleball is, for now, extinct from MLB as well.

SP Whitey Ford, 53.6 WAR, 1950-67: The best big-game starting pitcher in New York Yankees history (a 2.71 ERA over 22 World Series starts) and author of a 25-4, 3.21 ERA season in the 1961 Maris-Mantle campaign, Ford was a critical part of 11 American League pennant winners and six World Series champions. He made 10 All-Star teams (two years he made two of them) and won a pair of ERA titles, rolling out stellar year after year playing in front of one of the greatest teams ever.

SP Johnny Antonelli, 31.2 WAR, 1948-61: Just a few minutes away from Ford, another big-game pitcher plied his trade for the New York Giants. Antonelli’s 21-7, 2.30 ERA season in 1954 won him the ERA title and a third-place MVP finish, before his 0.84 ERA in the World Series, including a complete game, helped New York upset the favored Cleveland Indians. Antonelli went west with the Giants and made both All-Star teams in 1959, among his six overall appearances as an All-Star. A stellar career.

Bullpen
RP Don Larsen, 12.5 WAR, 1953-67: Larsen belongs on this team not just because he did something in 1956 that nobody else has done: pitch a perfect game in the World Series. People like to boil his career down to that one game, but consider how well Larsen pitched for New York from 1955 to 1958: a 39-17 record, a 3.31 ERA. Larsen was a quality pitcher, and he certainly rose to the moment.

RP Ron Perranoski, 18.9 WAR, 1961-73: A shutdown closer, in the fireman variety as opposed to the typical one-inning guy, who dominated for the mid-1960s Dodgers and late-1960s Twins. He won MVP votes three times as a reliever.

RP Lindy McDaniel, 29.0 WAR, 1955-75: McDaniel was reliable in any role. His 1960 campaign for the Cardinals was exemplary but far from atypical: 12 wins, 27 saves, a 2.09 ERA and third in the Cy Young Award voting.

RP Dick Hyde, 6.1 WAR, 1955-61: A terribly underrated reliever who in 1958 posted a 1.75 ERA and led the American League in saves with the Washington Senators.

RP Mike McCormick, 17.4 WAR, 1956-71: An absolute stud of a pitcher who succeeded as both a starter (1967 NL Cy Young with the San Francisco Giants with league-leading 22 wins) and a reliever, so we’re using him here as the primary lefty out of the pen who could go multiple innings.

RP Bob Lee, 8.7 WAR, 1964-68: Posted consecutive seasons with a sub-2.00 ERA to begin his career with the Angels in 1964-65.

.... These really are all-time greats. Make a team of these and you would have a challenge to the 1927 Yankees or the Big Red Machine of the 1970's. Put any two of the starting rotation of pitchers on the staff of the 1927 Yankees and you would have an improvement. Morgan, Fernandez, Allen, and Kaline would have fit well into a "Murderer's Row" lineup. 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bas...boola_feed

What a starting lineup!

Lou Brock, LF
Joe Morgan, 2B
Al Kaline, RF 
Dick Allen, 3B
Jimmy Wynn, CF
Bob Watson, 1B
Tony Fernandez, SS
Hal Smith, C
...and oh, what a starting rotation.

Since then we can add a multiple-championship manager in Tommy Lasorda and a long-serving coach in Wayne Terwilliger, a significant administrator in Bobby Brown, and get a superb catcher in Del Crandall, the last surviving Boston Brave. We have plenty of championship seasons, All  Star appearances, Gold Gloves, batting championships (batting average, home runs, and RBI's), pitching championships (wins, ERA, strike-outs, shutouts, and saves), and some convincing analysts for broadcasting. I could make the case that Joe Morgan was the most knowledgeable man on the field and in a broadcast booth; as a viewer you could learn something about the game from him and it was never a maudlin cliche. Al Kaline appeared every year in spring training until 2019 to teach the fine points of the game to players on the bubble between the Big Club and the minors -- and those who still ended up in the minors might have hastened their advancement to the majors.  

...as for Dick Allen it was his militancy on race relations that made him "difficult". He was ahead of his time.

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a thoroughly-nasty white racist who was on Death Row for gunning people down at a Jewish community center:
Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., a lifelong, unrepentant white supremacist who shot and killed three people outside a Jewish community center and retirement home in suburban Kansas City in 2014, has died in prison.

Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, dedicated his life to white supremacy. He spent decades writing and spreading racist and antisemitic messages and threatening and inflicting violence against liberals, Blacks and Jews.

A lifetime of hate culminated in the attacks on the two Jewish sites in Overland Park, Kan., after which he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.



As NPR's Embedded has reported, his case has been cited as a cautionary tale about law enforcement's failure to take seriously the threat of violence posed by white supremacists.

Miller, whose execution by lethal injection was pending active legal appeals, died in the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas on Monday. He was 80 years old.

An official cause of death was not immediately available, though a news release from the Kansas Department of Corrections said "preliminary assessment indicates the death was due to natural causes." A spokesperson declined to provide more information about his medical condition. Miller had chronic emphysema, according to his testimony in his 2015 trial.

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/04/993604289...-in-prison

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And now someone far more to be missed:


 
 

Bo 
(October 9, 2008 – May 8, 2021) was a pet dog of the Obama family, the first family of the United States from 2009 until 2017.[2] President Barack Obama and his family were given the male Portuguese Water Dog as a gift after months of speculation about the breed and identity of their future pet.[2][8] The final choice was made in part because elder daughter Malia's allergies dictated a need for a hypoallergenic breed. Bo was occasionally called "First Dog".[1][2][3] In August 2013, Bo was joined by Sunny, a female dog of the same breed.[9]

Bo was named by sisters Malia and Sasha after their cousins' cat, First Lady Michelle Obama's father, and as a reference to the R&B musician Bo Diddley. Bo's name was also Barack Obama's initials.

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Pierre Samuel "Pete" du Pont IV (January 22, 1935 – May 8, 2021) was an American businessman, lawyer and politician from Rockland, in New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. He was the United States Representative for Delaware from 1971 to 1977 and the 68th governor of Delaware from 1977 to 1985. He was a member of the Republican Party.

 1970 du Pont was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating Democrat John D. Daniello, a New Castle County Councilman and labor leader. He won election to the U.S. House of Representatives two more times, defeating Democrats Norma Handloff in 1972 and University of Delaware professor James R. Soles in 1974. In Congress, du Pont supported an attempt to limit presidential authority through the War Powers Act of 1973, but was one of the last to remain loyal to U.S. President Richard M. Nixon during the impeachment process.

Du Pont did not seek another term in the U.S. House of Representatives and instead ran for Governor of Delaware in 1976, defeating incumbent Democratic Governor Sherman W. Tribbitt. He was elected to a second term as governor in 1980, defeating Democratic State House leader William J. Gordy, and served two terms from January 18, 1977, until January 15, 1985.[2] 


As Governor, du Pont signed into law two income tax reduction measures and a constitutional amendment that restrained future tax increases and limited government spending.[1] The Wilmington News Journal praised these policies, saying that du Pont "revived [the] business climate and set the stage for [Delaware's] prosperity".[citation needed] In 1979, he founded the nonprofit "Jobs for Delaware Graduates", an employment counseling and job placement program for high school seniors not bound for college. This program was the model for other programs currently functioning in many states and foreign countries.


In 1981, Du Pont helped establish the credit card industry in Delaware, in a race against South Dakota, which the year before had abolished its usury law limiting the interest rates that banks can charge consumers for credit.[4] At the time, du Pont's cousin Nathan Hayward III advocated that tiny Delaware aspire to become the "financial Luxembourg of America" - a tax haven for corporations, yacht owners, and credit card companies permitted to charge unlimited interest.[5] Former Du Pont Chairman Irving S. Shapiro, then a lobbyist for Citicorp, helped Gov. du Pont pass the Financial Center Development Act in 1981 with the cooperation of the leadership of both parties and others in state and local government. Intended to attract two New York state banks that would hire at least 1,000 employees, the law eventually drew more than thirty banks to Delaware, creating 43,000 new finance related jobs and leading the state away from its previous dependence on the chemical industry in general and the Du Pont Company in particular.

With his term as governor expiring as term limited by law to end in 1985,[3] du Pont, as the dominant Delaware politician, was widely expected by many to challenge the incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Biden. But du Pont had little interest in legislative politics and declined to run, preparing instead for a long shot bid for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination in the 1988 election. (His wife, Elise, ran for the U.S. Congressional seat that he had previously held in 1984, but lost to incumbent Democrat Tom Carper.)[6] He declared his intent on September 16, 1986,[7] before anyone else. Biden also sought his party's nomination.

Running in the 1988 Republican presidential primaries, du Pont presented an unconventional program. As described by Celia Cohen in her book, Only in Delaware, du Pont, "wanted to reform Social Security by offering recipients private savings options in exchange for a corresponding reduction in government benefits. He proposed phasing out government subsidies for farmers. He said he would wean welfare clients off their benefits and get them into the workforce, even if government had to provide entry level jobs to get them started. He suggested students be subjected to mandatory, random drug tests with those who flunked losing their drivers [sic] licenses."[8] After finishing next to last in the New Hampshire primary, du Pont exited the race.[9]

 

In 1984, du Pont served as chairman of the Education Commission of the States, a national organization of educators dedicated to improving all facets of American education. He also served as chairman of the Hudson Institute from 1985 until 1987 and the National Review Institute from 1994 until 1997.

Du Pont was the chairman of the board for the National Center for Policy Analysis, a think tank based in Dallas, Texas; he was a retired director with the Wilmington, Delaware law firm of Richards, Layton, and Finger, and until May 2014, he wrote the monthly Outside the Box column for the Wall Street Journal.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_du_Pont

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Jean Maran, ce héros de guerre...

À 98 ans, Jean Maran devient le premier Martiniquais à recevoir la médaille d'or remise par l'Union fédérale nationale des anciens combattants. Forcément le courronnement d'une vie d'un «authentique enfant des mornes», qui ne fut donc pas que l'un des ténors de la vie politique martiniquaise, marquée par le choc des idées.

Le visage porte les marques des années écoulées, du temps qui passe, qui s'écoule, justifiant la tenue de la cérémonie au domicile de Jean Maran, à Clairière, à Fort-de-France. Mais une fois qu'il se dresse, se lève de son fauteuil, parfois avec difficulté, puis s'empare du micro et se met à parler avec une voix mal assurée et donnant toujours l'impression d'être plus que jamais en voie d'extinction, nous revoilà, d'un seul coup, avec l'homme qui remémore en nous des décennies de batailles politiques.




1920 : naissance le 8 mai à Riivère-Pilote de Jean Maran
1943/1944 : mobilisé sur le front
1945 : Instituteur puis professeur de collèges
1964 : conseiller général de Sainte-Luce. L'année suivante, il est élu maire de la localité. Il le restera jusque en 1990.
1977 : Président de l'Association des maires
1986 : Député de la Martinique au sein du groupe UDF (Union pour la démocratie française).
2015 : Il est fait maire honoraire de Sainte-Luce

https://web.archive.org/web/201903070541...465240.php

One of France's equivalents of America's GI (often also called "Greatest Generation") has died. He took Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité seriously from a French colony. He just passed away one day after his 101st birthday.

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Lloyd Price, one of the early pioneers of the rock n roll music genre, passed away Monday, May 3 at the age of 88. Mr. Price's signature song, Stagger Lee, was a pop version no doubt inspired by a folk version of the event done by Mississippi John Hurt. It was inspired by an actual event that occurred i St. Louis on Christmas Day 1895. Other notable hits included "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", "Personality" and "I'm Gonna Get Married". In an interview Mr. Price credited his longevity to the fact that he didn't engage in the risky behavior that engulfed many other entertainment figures. In later years he became a fixture on the oldies touring circuits.

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Indian designer of light combat aircraft:

Manas Bihari Verma (29 July 1943 – 4 May 2021) was an Indian aeronautical scientist instrumental in the development of the light combat aircraft, Tejas. In 2018, he was conferred the Padma Sri civilian honour by the President of India. After his retirement he launched Mobile Science Lab aimed at promoting science education in Bihar.

Verma worked as a scientist at the Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) in the aeronautical stream for 35 years. He worked in various aeronautical departments established in Bangalore, New Delhi, and Koraput. Later, he was made responsible for the design of the Tejas aircraft mechanical system. He was part of the design team of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) in the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA). He led the team responsible for the full-scale engineering development of the Tejas aircraft.[4] He was given the ‘Scientist of the Year’ award by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and ‘Technology Leadership Award’ by former PM Manmohan Singh respectively.[2] He retired from the ADA in 2005 as the Director of the Aeronautical Development Agency.[5]

In 2018, the Government of India conferred the Padma Sri award to him for his exemplary contributions in the field of aeronautical engineering.[6][7]

  




After retirement, he returned to his native village of Bour and was involved in imparting science and computer knowledge to Dalit children in the areas of Supaul, Madhubani, and Darbhanga, through the Viksit Bharat Foundation started by Verma.[8][9] Through his Mobile Science Lab project, launched in 2010, a team of science and computer instructors would visit schools to demonstrate scientific experiments and impart computer learning.[10] The teaching was done through the 'Lab in Box' (LIB) programme supported by the [/url]Verma worked as a scientist at the Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) in the aeronautical stream for 35 years. He worked in various aeronautical departments established in Bangalore, New Delhi, and Koraput. Later, he was made responsible for the design of the Tejas aircraft mechanical system. He was part of the design team of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) in the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA). He led the team responsible for the full-scale engineering development of the Tejas aircraft.[4] He was given the ‘Scientist of the Year’ award by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and ‘Technology Leadership Award’ by former PM Manmohan Singh respectively.[2] He retired from the ADA in 2005 as the Director of the Aeronautical Development Agency.[5]

In 2018, the Government of India conferred the Padma Sri award to him for his exemplary contributions in the field of aeronautical engineering.[6][




After retirement, he returned to his native village of Bour and was involved in imparting science and computer knowledge to Dalit children in the areas of Supaul, Madhubani, and Darbhanga, through the Viksit Bharat Foundation started by Verma.[8][9] Through his Mobile Science Lab project, launched in 2010, a team of science and computer instructors would visit schools to demonstrate scientific experiments and impart computer learning.[10] The teaching was done through the 'Lab in Box' (LIB) programme supported by the IBM.[1][4][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manas_Bihari_Verma#cite_note-:2-4]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manas_Bihari_Verma

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one of the last surviving stars of the Golden Age of American Cinema, although most of his extremely long career in acting folloed that era. 

Norman Lloyd (né Perlmutter; November 8, 1914 – May 11, 2021) was an American actor, producer, and director with a career in entertainment spanning nearly a century. He worked in every major facet of the industry including theatre, radio, television, and film, with a career that started in 1923. His last film, Trainwreck, was released in 2015, after Lloyd had attained 100 years of age.

In the 1930s, he apprenticed with Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre and worked with such influential groups as the Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspaper unit, the Mercury Theatre, and the Group Theatre. Lloyd's long professional association with Alfred Hitchcock began with his performance portraying a Nazi agent in the film Saboteur (1942). He also appeared in Spellbound (1945), and was a producer of Hitchcock's anthology television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Lloyd directed and produced episodic television throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As an actor, he appeared in over 60 films and television shows, with his roles including Bodalink in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (1952), Mr. Nolan in Dead Poets Society (1989), and Mr. Letterblair in The Age of Innocence (1993). In the 1980s, Lloyd gained a new generation of fans for playing Dr. Daniel Auschlander, one of the starring roles on the medical drama St. Elsewhere.

[/url]
Norman Lloyd was born Norman Perlmutter[2] on November 8, 1914, in Jersey City, New Jersey.[3] His family was Jewish[4] and lived in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Max Perlmutter, was an accountant[2] who later became a salesman[5] and proprietor of a furniture store.[6] His mother, Sadie Horowitz Perlmutter, was a bookkeeper[5] and housewife.[7] She had a good voice and a lifelong interest in the theatre, and she took her young son to singing and dancing lessons.[8]:1 He had two sisters, Ruth[9] and Janice.[10] Lloyd became a child performer, appearing at vaudeville benefits and women's clubs, and was a professional by the age of nine.[8]:3


Lloyd graduated from high school when he was 15 and began studies at New York University, but left at the end of his sophomore year. "All around me I could see the way the Depression was affecting everyone; for my family, for people in business like my father, it was a terrible time," he wrote. "I just wasn't going to stay in college, paying tuition to get a degree to be a lawyer, when I could see lawyers that had become taxi drivers."[8]:4 Lloyd's father died in 1945, at age 55, "broken by the world that he was living in."[11]


In 1932, at age 17, Lloyd auditioned and became the youngest of the apprentices under the direction of May Sarton at Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in New York City.[8]:11, 235 He then joined Sarton's Apprentice Theatre in New Hampshire, continuing his studies with her and her associate, Eleanor Flexner.[8]:15–19 The group rehearsed a total of ten modern European plays and performed at The New School for Social Research and in Boston.[8]:16–17, 235 Members of the Harvard Dramatic Club saw Lloyd on stage and offered him the lead in a play directed by Joseph Losey.[8]:20–21 He rejoined Sarton's group, for whom Losey directed a Boston production of Gods of the Lightning. When Sarton was forced to give up her company, Losey suggested that Lloyd audition for a production of André Obey's Noah (1935). It was Lloyd's first Broadway show.[8]:22–26


Through Losey, Lloyd became involved in the social theatre of the 1930s, beginning with an acting collective called The Theatre of Action. The group was preparing a production of Michael Blankfort's The Crime (1936),[8]:236 [12] directed by Elia Kazan. One of the company members was actress Peggy Craven, who became Lloyd's wife.[8]:28[13]


Losey brought Lloyd into the Federal Theatre Project — which Lloyd called "one of the great theaters of all time"[14]— and its Living Newspapers,[8]:31 which dramatized contemporary events. They initially prepared Ethiopia, about the Italian invasion, which was deemed too controversial and was terminated. The first completed presentation was Triple-A Plowed Under (1936), followed by Injunction Granted (1936) and Power (1937).[8]:236

When Orson Welles and John Houseman left the Federal Theatre Project to form their own independent repertory theatre company, the Mercury Theatre, Lloyd was invited to become a charter member. He played a memorable role in its first stage production, Caesar (1937), Welles's modern-dress adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar — streamlined into an anti-fascist tour- de-force. In a scene that became the fulcrum of the show, Cinna the Poet (Lloyd) dies at the hands not of a mob but of a secret police force. Lloyd called it "an extraordinary scene [that] gripped the audience in a way that the show stopped for about three minutes. The audience stopped it with applause. It showed the audience what fascism was; rather than an intellectual approach, you saw a physical one."[14]

The Mercury prepared The Shoemaker's Holiday to go into repertory with Caesar beginning in January 1938. During the December 25 performance of Caesar — when the sets, lighting, and costumes for Shoemaker were ready but no previews had taken place — Welles asked the cast if they cared to present a surprise preview immediately after the show. He invited the audience to stay and watch the set changes, and the curtain rose at 1:15 a.m. Lloyd recalled it as "the wildest triumph imaginable. The show was a smash during its run — but never again did we have a performance like that one.


In late summer 1939, Lloyd was invited to Hollywood, to join Welles and other Mercury Theatre members in the first film being prepared for RKO Pictures — Heart of Darkness. Given a six-week guarantee at $500 a week, he took part in a reading for the film,[8]:62–65 which was to be presented entirely through a first-person camera. After elaborate pre-production the project never reached production because Welles was unable to trim $50,000 from its budget,[21]:31 something RKO insisted upon as its revenue was declining sharply in Europe by autumn 1939.[22]:215–216 Welles asked the actors to stay a few more weeks as he put together another film project, but Lloyd was ill-advised[14] by a member of the radio company and impulsively returned to New York. "Those who stayed did Citizen Kane," Lloyd wrote. "I have always regretted it."[8]:65



Lloyd later returned to Hollywood to play a Nazi spy in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), beginning a long friendship and professional association with Hitchcock.[23] Three years later he was cast by French director Jean Renoir to portray the malicious, dull-witted character Finley in The Southerner, which was the fourth film of six productions that Renoir directed in the 1940s while living in the United States.[24] After a few more villainous screen roles, Lloyd then worked behind the camera as an assistant on Lewis Milestone's Arch of Triumph (1948).[23] A friend of John Garfield, Lloyd performed with him in the 1951 film noir crime drama He Ran All the Way, Garfield's last film before the Hollywood blacklist ended his film career.[23]

A marginal victim of the Hollywood blacklist, Lloyd was rescued professionally by Hitchcock, who had previously cast the actor in Saboteur and Spellbound (1945).[25] Hitchcock hired Lloyd as an associate producer and a director on his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1958. Previously, Lloyd directed the sponsored film A Word to the Wives (1955) with Marsha Hunt and Darren McGavin. He continued directing and producing episodic television throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He took an unusual role in the Night Gallery episode "A Feast of Blood" as the bearer of a cursed brooch, which he inflicts upon a hapless woman, played by Sondra Locke, who had spurned his romantic advances.[25] In FM (1978), Lloyd has a small but pivotal role as the owner of a Los Angeles radio station that is undergoing a mutiny of sorts, due to a battle over advertising. Lloyd's character (Carl Billings) ends up playing the white hat role and keeping the station as is, to the delight of staff and fans.

In the 1980s, Lloyd played Dr. Daniel Auschlander in the television drama St. Elsewhere over its six-season run (1982–88). Originally scheduled for only four episodes, Lloyd became a regular for the rest of the series.[26] In addition to Ed Flanders and William Daniels, St. Elsewhere included a roster of relative unknowns, including Ed Begley, Jr., Denzel Washington, Stephen Furst, Eric Laneuville, David Morse, and Howie Mandel.[25]



Lloyd's first film role in nearly a decade was in Dead Poets Society (1989), playing Mr. Nolan, the authoritative headmaster of Welton Academy, opposite Robin Williams.[27] Initially, Lloyd was hesitant when asked to audition, because he thought the director and producers could judge whether or not he was right for the part by watching his acting on St. Elsewhere.[28] Director Peter Weir was living in Australia and had not seen St. Elsewhere.[28] Lloyd agreed to audition for him after winning his daily tennis match.[27]



From 1998 to 2001, he played Dr. Isaac Mentnor in the UPN science fiction drama Seven Days.[27] His numerous television guest-star appearances include The Joseph Cotten Show; Murder, She Wrote; The Twilight Zone; Wiseguy; Star Trek: The Next Generation; Wings; The Practice; and Civil Wars.[27]



He played in various radio plays for Peggy Webber's California Artists Radio Theater and Yuri Rasovsky's Hollywood Theater of the Ear. His last film role was in Trainwreck (2015) which he acted in at the age of 99,[27] although he admitted he was slightly put off by the film's raunchy content. He is the subject of the documentary Who Is Norman Lloyd?, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on September 1, 2007. In 2010, he guest-starred in an episode of ABC's Modern Family.[29] On December 5, 2010, he presented An Evening with Norman Lloyd at the Colony Theatre in Burbank, California, where he spoke about his career and answered questions from the audience.[25]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lloyd

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elsewhere]

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Charles Sidney Grodin (April 21, 1935 – May 18, 2021) was an American actor, comedian, author, and television talk show host. Grodin began his acting career in the 1960s appearing in TV serials including The Virginian. After a small part in Rosemary's Baby in 1968, he played the lead in Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and supporting roles in Mike Nichols's Catch-22 (1970) and Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait (1978).

Often cast as a put-upon straight man, Grodin became familiar as a supporting actor in many Hollywood comedies of the era, including Real Life (1979), Seems Like Old Times (1980), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), Ishtar (1987), Dave (1993) and Clifford (1994). Grodin co-starred in the action comedy Midnight Run (1988) and in the family film Beethoven (1992). He made frequent appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman.

In the mid-1990s, Grodin retired from acting, and wrote several autobiographies, and became a talk show host on CNBC and in 2000 a political commentator for 60 Minutes II. He returned to acting with a handful of roles in the mid-2010s, including in Louis C.K.'s FX show Louie and Noah Baumbach's film While We're Young (2014).
Grodin won several awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special in 1978 for the Paul Simon Special alongside Chevy Chase, Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon, and Lily Tomlin. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for The Heartbreak Kid in 1972. He won Best Actor at the 1988 Valladolid International Film Festival for Midnight Run, and the American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his performance in Dave in 1993.

Much more here.

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Good riddance, and he can roast in Hell!

Abu Mohammed Abubakar bin Mohammad al-Sheikawi (also known by the alias Darul Akeem wa Zamunda Tawheed, or Darul Tawheed; "the abode of monotheism"; born 1965, 1969 or 1975[1] - c. May 2021) was a Kanuri man known as the leader of Boko Haram, a Nigerian Islamist militant group.[2][3] He served as deputy leader to the group's founder, Mohammed Yusuf, until Yusuf was executed in 2009.


Nigerian authorities believed that Shekau was killed in 2009 during clashes between security forces and Boko Haram until July 2010, when Shekau appeared in a video claiming leadership of the group.[3] He has subsequently been regularly reported dead and was thought to use body doubles.[4][5][6] In March 2015, Shekau pledged allegiance to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Shekau was a Salafi, until 2016, when he ended his relation to ISIL.[7] He has been described as possessing a photographic memory.[8]

On May 21, 2021, an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, backed recent reports by Nigerian officials, stated that Shekau died after detonating a suicide vest.[9]


More here on this horrible person.

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Yuan Longping (Chinese: 袁隆平; September 7, 1930 – May 22, 2021) was a Chinese agronomist, known for developing the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s.


Hybrid rice has since been grown in dozens of countries in Africa, America, and Asia—providing a robust food source in areas with a high risk of famine. For his contributions, Yuan is always called the "Father of Hybrid Rice" by the Chinese media.[2][3] On May 22, Yuan Longping died of multiple organ failure.[1]

Yuan was born in Beijing in 1930. [4]His ancestral home is in De'an County, Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, he moved with his family and attended school in many places, including Hunan, Chongqing, Hankou and Nanjing.


He graduated from Southwest Agricultural College (now part of Southwest University) in 1953 and began his teaching career at an agriculture school in Anjiang, Hunan Province. He married one of his students, Deng Ze (邓则) in 1964,[5][6] they have two children, Yuan Ding'an (袁定安) and Yuan Dingjiang (袁定江).[7]



He came up with an idea for hybridizing rice in the 1960s when a series of harmful political policies (such as the Great Leap Forward) had plunged China into an unprecedented famine that caused the deaths of millions of Chinese citizens.

Since then, Yuan had devoted himself to the research and development of a better rice breed. In 1964, he happened to find a natural rice plant for use in his hybridization experiments that had obvious advantages over other species. Greatly encouraged, he began to study the elements of this particular breed.



The biggest problem by then was having no known method to reproduce hybrid rice in mass quantities, and that was the problem that Yuan set out to solve. In 1964, Yuan created his theory of using a hypothetical naturally-mutated male-sterile strain of rice that he predicted most probably existed for the creation of a new reproductive hybrid rice species, and in two years' time he managed to successfully find a few individuals of such a mutated male-sterile rice that he could use for his research. Subsequent experiments proved his original theory feasible, making that theory his most important contribution to hybrid rice.





Yuan went on to solve more problems than followed from the first. The first experimental hybrid rice species that were cultivated didn't show any significant advantage over commonly grown species, so Yuan suggested crossbreeding rice with a more distant relative: the wild rice. In 1970, he found a particularly important species of wild rice that he ended up using for the creation of a high-yield hybrid rice species.[citation needed] In 1973, in cooperation with others, he was finally able to establish a complete process for creating and reproducing this high-yield hybrid rice species.



The next year they successfully cultivated a hybrid rice species which had great advantages over conventionally grown rice. It yielded 20 percent more per unit than that of common rice breeds, putting China in the lead worldwide in rice production. For this achievement, Yuan Longping was dubbed the "Father of Hybrid Rice."[8]



At present, as much as 50 percent of China's total number of rice paddies grow Yuan Longping's hybrid rice species and these hybrid rice paddies yield 60 percent of the total rice production in China.[8] Due to Yuan's hard work, China's total rice output rose from 56.9 million tons in 1950 to 194.7 million tons in 2017; about 300 billion kilograms of rice has been produced over the last twenty years, compared to the estimated amount that would have been produced without the hybrid rice species. The annual yield increase is enough to feed 60 million additional people.[9]



The "Super Rice" Yuan worked on improving showed a 30 percent higher yield, compared to common rice, with a record yield of 17,055 kilograms per hectare being registered in Yongsheng County in Yunnan Province in 1999.[9]
In January 2014, Yuan said in an interview that genetically modified food would be the future direction of food and that he had been working on genetic modification of rice.[10]

More here on this important agronomist.

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Roman Kent (born on 18th April 1929 as Roman Kniker in Lodz ( Poland ), died on 21st May 2021 in New York City , United States ) was a Polish-American Holocaust survivor, and since 2011 president of the International Auschwitz Committee .


Kniker was a son of the textile manufacturer Emanuel Kniker and his wife Sonia. He grew up with three siblings and attended the private Jewish school in his hometown of Łódź, until it was closed by the German occupation forces after the occupation of Poland at the beginning of the Second World War . The family also had to leave the apartment and lived for some time in a room in the father's confiscated factory until they were transferred to the ghetto at the end of 1939where his father died of malnutrition in 1943. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1944, the rest of the Kniker family were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where Roman was separated from his mother and sisters. Together with his brother he went through other concentration camps in Mertzbachtal, Dornau and Flossenbürg, [1] until the two were liberated by the US Army in April 1945 on the death march from Flossenbürg to Dachau.

In June 1946, Roman and Leon Kniker immigrated to the United States, where they simplified their family name to Kent.

Kent was President of the International Auschwitz Committee since 2011. Also in 2011, at the suggestion of US President Barack Obama, he became a member of the Advisory Board of the US Holocaust Memorial Council. He was also chairman of the American organization of Shoah survivors and their descendants and president of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, an organization that helps needy non-Jews who saved Jews during the time of the Shoah.

Kent was treasurer of the Jewish Claims Conference.

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Just a reminder: the most important event in human history since World War II is the independence of India (and with it Pakistan, Burma, and Sri Lanka). Size and scale dwarf all other secessions from colonial rule. Communist takeover of China? It is still China, and Communist rule did abandon economic Marxism and might even collapse at some point (what follows will still be China, much as much of the Soviet Union is still Russia) or morph into something else. As with veterans of the Second World War (the most important collection of events in modern world history, and it precipitated the weakening of colonial rule, including in India), the youngest generation of adults involved in the independence struggle for India are themselves fading out in extreme old age. 

Illustration:


Harohalli Srinivasaiah Doreswamy (10 April 1918 – 26 May 2021) was an Indian activist and journalist. He was a freedom fighter in the Indian independence movement who became a centenarian in April 2018.[1][2] He ran the publication house of Sahitya Mandira and the Indian nationalist newspaper Pauravani during the British Raj and the period afterwards.[3] The historian Ramachandra Guha describes him as the "conscience of the state (Karnataka)" due to his activism.[4]

Doreswamy was born in the village of Harohalli, in the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore, a princely state of the British Indian Empire. He was raised by his grandfather Shamanna after his parents passed away when he was five years old.[1] He had an elder brother Seetharam who would later become the mayor of Bangalore in independent India.[5] His grandfather was a shanubhog (village accountant) and a nominated member of the representative assembly. Doreswamy completed his primary education in his village and then went to Bangalore to complete his higher education. He was enrolled in the Government Intermediate College of Bangalore for his higher secondary education and later graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the Central College of Bangalore.[6]

After finishing his education in June 1942, he began teaching mathematics and physics at a high school in Bangalore. In August, when the Quit India Movement had begun, he became involved in setting up small scale time bombs in postboxes and record rooms to burn official documents as a method adopted to disrupt the functioning of the British Raj.[1][7] He along with some associates also became involved in organising protests and general strikes in Mysore State.[8] He collaborated with N.D. Shankar, a freedom fighter and communist union leader in organising a 14 day general strike at three textile mills, namely Raja, Minerva and Binny Mills, which saw the participation of 8,000 workers. Subsequently, there were strikes in various factories and mills across the region over the following 3 to 30 days. He also formed associations with A.G. Ramachandra Rao and Sardar Venkataramaiah who were underground at the time.[5]

In 1943, one of his bomb suppliers, namely Ramachandra got caught by the police with time bombs in his possession who named Doreswamy as a contact. Following which, he was arrested and put under indefinite detention in Bangalore Central Jail.[1] He stated that during his detention he contacted his supplier and encouraged him to confess to being the one responsible for bombing postboxes so that one of them could be released and continue the operation. Despite the efforts, the authorities retained him in custody and denied him an opportunity for a trial.[8] The jail at the time was being used to hold political prisoners including his brother, H.S. Seetharam. He described the prison to have been converted into a place of learning where he studied and played volleyball with other prisoners. He learned to speak Tamil and Hindi from other independence movement activists during this time. On 26 January 1944, the prisoners including him were beaten up by the guards, confined in their rooms and denied food for celebrating the declaration of Purna Swaraj. He was later released in the summer of 1944 after spending 14 months in jail at a time when the government was releasing political prisoners.[1][5]

After his release from prison, Doreswamy established a publication house and book store by the name of Sahitya Mandira in Bangalore. He later moved to Mysore on the request of a dying friend to take over the operation of his newspaper, Pauravani which was running at a loss at the time.[3] In 1947, during the Political integration of India, the Maharaja of Mysore was reluctant to accede to the Indian Union, which resulted in the "Mysore Chalo" movement to pressurize the maharaja into acceding. Due to the movement, congress leaders were arrested and press freedom was curbed by the Kingdom of Mysore. Doreswamy among other journalists are noted to have continued publishing their newspapers from undisclosed locations.[9] The Pauravani, which was operating as an Indian nationalist newspaper was being published from the city of Hindupur, Madras State situated at the border of the Kingdom of Mysore.[10] In an interview, Doreswamy stated that a teacher named Sheshagiri assisted him in circulating the newspaper at the time. He also stated that literary figures like R.K. Narayan and K.S. Narasimhaswamy were frequent visitors at his book store during and after the independence movement.[11]

During the 1950s, Doreswamy participated in the Bhoodan movement and the movement for the Unification of Karnataka.[12] He was jailed for four months in 1975 after he sent a letter to Indira Gandhi threatening to launch an agitation against her for "acting like a dictator" during the Emergency in India.[1] He was active during the JP Movement against the Emergency rule. During the 1980s, he was involved in various movements for the rights of farmers and other marginalised communities, and later became active in the India Against Corruption movement.[4]
In later years, Doreswamy was involved in a number of agitations and committees working against the encroachment of water bodies and dumping of garbage near impoverished areas in and outside Bangalore.[13][14][12] The Hindu credits his activism in Bangalore with having led to the construction of six new waste processing plants in the city in 2014.[4] In October 2014, he led an anti-encroachment protest in Bangalore with the support of A. T. Ramaswamy and the Aam Aadmi Party, demanding the implementation of Land Grabbing Prohibition Act, 2007 from the state government. The protest came to an end after 38 days with the government yielding to the demands.[15] In 2016, he launched a 24/7 dharna (picketing) outside the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha when sessions were being held in the legislative assembly in Belgaum demanding the grant of land to the landless in the state which forced the Chief minister, Siddaramaiah to personally give him assurances that the promise will be kept. He was also involved in agitations against the eviction of adivasis from their tribal lands in Kodagu district.[16][12]

Doreswamy took active participation in the 2019–2020 protests in India.[17] According to him, the country's democracy was being threatened by the government of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah and that the situation created by them is becoming similar to that created by the British Raj.[18][19] In response, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka had attacked him by alleging that he was a Pakistani agent and an "anti national". The party justified the attacks stating that he had done the unthinkable by criticising the prime minister, Narendra Modi.[4]


Doreswamy died on 26 May 2021 due to cardiac arrest.[21]

[Eric the Green]

Former Senator John Warner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Warner

"John William Warner III (February 18, 1927 – May 25, 2021) was an American attorney and politician who served as the United States Secretary of the Navy from 1972 to 1974 and a five-term Republican U.S. Senator from Virginia from 1979 to 2009. Warner served as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1999 to 2001, and again from 2003 to 2007. He also served as the Chair of the Senate Rules Committee from 1995 to 1999.

Warner was the sixth husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor, whom he married before being elected to the Senate. He was a veteran of the Second World War and Korean War, and was one of five World War II veterans serving in the Senate at the time of his retirement.[1] He did not seek reelection in 2008. After leaving the Senate, he worked for the law firm of Hogan Lovells, where he had previously been employed before joining the United States Department of Defense as the Under Secretary of the Navy during the presidency of Richard Nixon in 1969.

Warner's 2002 re-election is the most recent election in which a Republican won a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia."



Like the recently deceased Senator Brock mentioned by brower above, Warner was one of the vanishing breed of senators who could cross the aisle and seek consensus. In 2016 he voted for Hillary Clinton and later supported the man he defeated earlier, Democrat Mark Warner (no relation), as also reported on PBS Newshour.

[pbrower2a]

Harvey Schlossberg (January 27, 1936 – May 21, 2021) was an officer with the New York City Police Department (NYPD), Freudian psychoanalyst and the founder of modern crisis negotiation. He founded the Psychological Services department in the NYPD, where he pioneered treatment for violence-prone police. In the Handbook of Police Psychology, Schlossberg was called a "father of modern police psychology" for his role in changing the tactics police employed in hostage situations.[1]

Schlossberg was born in Manhattan on January 27, 1936. His father, Harry, worked as a mechanic; his mother, Sally (Frankel), was a housewife. His grandparents immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe, and he was of Jewish descent. He attended Eastern District High School in Brooklyn, before studying chemistry at Brooklyn College. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1958, Schlossberg joined the NYPD to fund his postgraduate studies. He went on to obtain a master's degree in psychology from Long Island University, and was awarded a doctorate in clinical psychology from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yeshiva University in 1971.[1]


Schlossberg first worked as a traffic officer in the accident investigation unit. He was later moved to the Medical Bureau, shortly after commissioner Patrick V. Murphy learned that he had a doctorate in psychology. There, he performed emotional testing to assess the well-being of prospective and current colleagues in the NYPD, and was made director of psychological services in 1974.[1] He helped resolve the 1973 siege in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,[2] coined the term Stockholm Syndrome,[3] and helped catch David Berkowitz, also known as the Son of Sam.[1] The NYPD Hostage Negotiation Team was the brainchild of NYPD chief Simon Eisdorfer, with Schlossberg responsible for formulating the team’s strategy. He advocated containing a hostage situation to a restricted area, with police starting negotiations, keeping up communications with the hostage-takers, and gaining their trust in the hopes that they would change course and free their captives.[1] He proceeded to train over 70,000 crisis negotiators globally and his theories were soon adopted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[4] Schlossberg was credited with helping to save over 40,000 lives globally with his tactics.[5]



During the 47-hour-long siege at a Williamsburg sporting goods store – the longest in NYPD history[6] – eleven hostages were taken by four gunmen, who vowed to fight to the death. Schlossberg spent 14 hours assessing their psychology and advising high-ranking police officials on what to do next.[7] He called the hostage-takers' bluff when they requested a doctor and food, observing at the time how "if you’re worried about food, you don’t want to die."[1] The siege ultimately ended without any further deaths when the gunmen surrendered.[1][7]



Schlossberg authored of his memoir Psychologist With A Gun (1974) with Lucy Freeman.[1] He was featured in the documentary film Hold Your Fire covering the 1973 Williamsburg siege. The documentary won the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film in October 2020.[1][7]

Post-NYPD[edit]


After leaving the NYPD in 1978, Schlossberg served as chief psychologist for the police department in Rye, New York, from 1988 to 1994, as well as for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from 1990 until 1999. He also went into academia, teaching at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice from 1974 to 1982.[1] He subsequently taught as an associate professor at St. John's University for 27 years.[1][7] During his later years, he resided in Forest Hills, Queens, where he also kept a private practice and hung a portrait of Sigmund Freud in his office.[1]