ROANOKE, Va. (AP) – World War II fighter pilot William Overstreet Jr., who gained fame for flying beneath the Eiffel Tower’s arches in pursuit of a German aircraft, has died. He was 92.

According to Oakley’s Funeral Home, Overstreet died Sunday at a Roanoke hospital.

Overstreet’s famous flight in Nazi-occupied Paris has been credited with lifting the spirits of French Resistance troops on the ground. In a 2009 ceremony at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, the French ambassador to the United States presented Overstreet with France’s Legion of Honor.

According to his obituary on the funeral home website, Overstreet returned from war and married Nita Brackens of Covington, who preceded him in death. He worked as an accountant until retiring at the age of 65, then worked with numerous charities and veterans groups.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

BALTIMORE (AP) – A Roman Catholic priest who was censured by the Vatican for his ministry to gays and lesbians has died.

The Rev. Robert Nugent, a co-founder of New Ways Ministry, had been suffering from lung cancer when he died Wednesday in Milwaukee at age 76, the group said in a statement.

Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick created the ministry in 1977 with a goal of reconciling gays and lesbians with the wider church community.

In 1999, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog, said they had harmed the church by causing confusion about church teaching that same-sex relationships were sinful. Ratzinger, who went on to become Pope Benedict XVI, ordered the co-founders to permanently stop their outreach.

Nugent told The Associated Press in an interview that year he didn’t dissent from the core teachings on homosexuality, but opposed the language the church used when discussing the issue.

“I spent 25 years telling homosexuals that the church cares for you, that it wants you to have a part in it,” Nugent said. “How can I talk to them and convince them of that if I use language like evil, depravity and disorder?”

New Ways Ministry, based in Mount Rainier, Md., continued to operate.

Nugent mostly stayed on the sidelines as the Vatican had directed, while Gramick continued to advocate for gay rights, often running afoul of U.S. bishops. New Ways Ministry supported the 2012 Maryland law that recognized same-sex marriage.

Nugent, a member of the Salvatorian religious order, had said he had been deeply pained by the Vatican order, but he complied since disobedience would have cost him his priesthood. Francis DeBernardo, who now leads New Ways Ministry, said Nugent had “exhibited uncommon courage” in his work.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

NEW YORK (AP) – Longtime conservative radio host Bob Grant, whose combative style became the template for broadcasters such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, has died at age 84.

Grant’s death on Tuesday in Hillsborough, N.J., after a short illness was confirmed on Thursday by New York radio station WABC, which once fired him over his acid-tongued remarks about the plane crash death of one of President Bill Clinton’s cabinet members, the first black commerce secretary.

“Remember this: If you are offended during the next two hours, it’s nobody’s fault but mine,” Grant said at the top of a broadcast featured in a 2010 tribute. “Because somebody’s got to say these things. It has to be me.”

Grant was born Robert Ciro Gigante in Chicago in 1929. He began his broadcasting career in the 1940s at WBBM in Chicago. He moved on to radio and television jobs in Los Angeles and was named afternoon drive time host at WABC in 1984.

Over the years, Grant, who was white, offended some listeners by referring to former New York Mayor David Dinkins, who’s black, as a “washroom attendant,” calling Clinton a “sleazebag” and suggesting women on welfare should be sterilized.

He once said of blacks: “I can’t take these screaming savages, whether they’re in the African Methodist Church, the A.M.E. church, or whether they’re in the streets, burning, robbing, looting.”

And, in a May 1993 broadcast, he lambasted Martin Luther King Jr. as “that slimeball” and “this bum, this womanizer, this liar, this fake, this phony.”

WABC mostly defended Grant’s First Amendment right to voice his opinions. But he apparently crossed the line in 1996 amid early reports that there was only one survivor of the crash of a plane carrying U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in Croatia.

“My hunch is that he (Brown) is the one survivor,” he said. “I must have a hunch. Maybe, ’cause at heart, I’m a pessimist.”

Two weeks later, Grant was taken off the air. He moved to WOR in New York before returning to WABC in 2006.

Grant is survived by his sons, Jeff Grant, of Sun City, Ariz., and Chris Grant, of Fallbrook, Calif., and by his daughters, Alisa Mingus, of Kalamazoo, Mo., and Cynthia Gaydosh, of Bridgewater, N.J., according to an obituary prepared by a New Jersey funeral home.

The obituary says Grant “was a proud friend of Bill W. for 44 years” – a reference to William Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – Emily Johnson Dickerson, the last remaining monolingual speaker of the Native American language of Chickasaw, has died. She was 93.

The Chickasaw Nation said Friday that Dickerson died at her Ada home on Monday. Her son, Carlin Thompson, told The Associated Press that his mother’s health had started to deteriorate after she fell and broke her hip a few months ago. Funeral services will be held Saturday. Burial will be at the Steedman Cemetery, near Kullihoma ceremonial grounds on Chickasaw Nation land.

Dickerson spoke only the Chickasaw language her entire life, and she was the last monolingual speaker of the Chickasaw language. She was also one of only an estimated 70 fluent speakers of the Chickasaw language left.

“She was a rare type of Chickasaw Indian, a rare person, actually,” Thompson, 60, said.

Born with the Chickasaw name of Shonsh-she, her official date of birth is Feb. 22, 1920, though Thompson said family members believe she was actually two years older. She was given the Anglo name of Emily Johnson Dickerson and grew up dirt poor in Oklahoma picking cotton and pecans to sale. She married in 1968 and became a homemaker and mother, raising children who spoke only Chickasaw until they attended school and learned English.

A resourceful woman, she would buy sacks of flour and turn the bags into clothing for her children, Thompson said.

Though she couldn’t read or write the Chickasaw language, her knowledge of the spoken word was unparalleled. While many of today’s Chickasaw speakers tend to speak a hybrid of that language and Choctaw, Dickerson was true to the Muskogean language’s roots, Thompson said.

Chickasaw Nation Gov. Bill Anoatubby said in a statement that she was an “unequalled source of knowledge about our language and culture.” Thompson said his mother was also very knowledgeable about the tribe’s dancing and burial customs and had a keen interest in herbs as a healing remedy – in her more than 90 years of life she never once took an aspirin, he said.

Joshua Hinson, director of the Chickasaw Nation Language Department, said in a statement that Dickerson’s death was going to have a profound effect on the 55,000-member tribe based in south-central Oklahoma.

“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the loss and what this means to the Chickasaw Nation,” he said.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

NEW YORK (AP) – George Goodman, a journalist, business author and award-winning television host who under the pseudonym “Adam Smith” made economics accessible to millions of people, died Friday at age 83.

Goodman’s son, Mark Goodman, said his father died at the University of Miami Hospital after a long battle with the bone marrow disorder myelofibrosis.

Starting in the 1950s, the elder Goodman had a long, diverse and accomplished career, whether as a founder of New York Magazine, as a best-selling business author or as the personable host of “Adam Smith’s Money World.”

Known as “Jerry” to his friends, he prided himself on making arcane debates among economists and business leaders understandable, often using an anecdotal or irreverent approach to explain a complicated issue. He has been credited with coining the mocking catchphrase, “Assume a can opener,” as a parody of academic jargon.

“I have always believed that if you dramatize a story, you can make it comprehensible while at the same time maintaining a relatively high level of sophistication,” he once said.

“Adam Smith’s Money World” was a multiple Emmy winner that aired on PBS stations from 1984-1996, with guests including Warren Buffett and then-Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker. He was also an executive editor at Esquire, a member of The New York Times editorial board and a commentator for NBC television. In recent years, he sponsored a lecture series through the Harvard Club of New York Foundation.

Before his success in the business world, Goodman had written novels and worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter. He helped adapt his own book, “The Wheeler Dealers,” into a 1963 movie of the same name starring Lee Remick and James Garner.

Smith was editing the monthly journal The Institutional Investor when his first nonfiction book, “The Money Game,” was published in 1968. Among the year’s top sellers, and read for decades after, “The Money Game” offered a colorful take on the financial markets that added a human element to the laws of finance and seemed as influenced by Damon Runyon as by any economic theorist. One popular character was an oversized investment guru known as “Scarsdale Fats.”

“As far as I know it was a couple of the Boston institutions that hung the nickname on him, which shows that Boston institutions are not as stuffy as they used to be” Smith wrote. “One of his enthusiasts described him as ‘glob shaped.’ Minnesota Fats is an ectomorph and Sydney Greenstreet would blow away in the Scarsdale Fats ratio! All Scarsdale will say is that he is comfortably over 200 pounds.”

“The Money Game” was also Goodman’s first book as “Adam Smith.” He wanted to keep Wall Street from learning his identity – the game was up soon after publication – and accepted a suggestion from founding New York Magazine editor Clay Felker that he name himself after the 18th century economist.

His other books included “Supermoney,” a 1972 publication that introduced many readers to a then-little known Buffett; “Powers of Mind” and “Paper Money,” which came out in 1981.

“Where some authors exploit the paranoia over paper money, warning of horrible crashes and galloping inflation to come, Adam Smith strives for sanity,” Leonard Silk wrote of “Paper Money” in a review for The New York Times. “And where some writers urge people to look out for Number One and to be prepared to head for the hills with their gold coins, silver futures, cans of beans and weapons to keep out the neighbors, Adam Smith counsels the revival of a sense of community.”

George Jerome Waldo Goodman grew up outside St. Louis and was graduated from Harvard University in 1952. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, the forerunner of the Green Berets. He was still in the Army when his first novel, the comic tale “The Bubble Makers,” came out in 1955.

He is survived by two children and three grandchildren. His wife, actress Sally Brophy, died in 2007.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Phil Everly, who formed an influential harmony duo with his brother, Don, that touched the hearts and sparked the imaginations of rock ‘n’ roll singers for decades, including the Beatles and Bob Dylan, died Friday. He was 74.

Everly died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at a Burbank hospital, said his son Jason Everly.

Phil and Don Everly helped draw the blueprint of rock ‘n’ roll in the late 1950s and 1960s with a high harmony that captured the yearning and angst of a nation of teenage baby boomers looking for a way to express themselves beyond the simple platitudes of the pop music of the day.

The Beatles, early in their career, once referred to themselves as “the English Everly Brothers.” And Bob Dylan once said, “We owe these guys everything. They started it all.”

The Everlys’ hit records included the then-titilating “Wake Up Little Susie” and the universally identifiable “Bye Bye Love,” each featuring their twined voices with lyrics that mirrored the fatalism of country music and a rocking backbeat that more upbeat pop. These sounds and ideas would be warped by their devotees into a new kind of music that would ricochet around the world.

In all, their career spanned five decades, although they performed separately from 1973 to 1983. In their heyday between 1957 and 1962, they had 19 top 40 hits.

The two broke up amid quarrelling in 1973 after 16 years of hits, then reunited in 1983, “sealing it with a hug,” Phil Everly said.

Although their number of hit records declined in the late 1980s, they made successful concert tours in this country and Europe.

They were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, the same year they had a hit pop-country record, “Born Yesterday.”

Don Everly was born in 1937 in Brownie, Ky., to Ike and Margaret Everly, who were folk and country music singers. Phil Everly was born to the couple on Jan. 19, 1939, in Chicago where the Everlys moved to from Brownie when Ike grew tired of working in the coal mines.

The brothers began singing country music in 1945 on their family’s radio show in Shenandoah, Iowa.

Their career breakthrough came when they moved to Nashville in the mid-1950s and signed a recording contract with New York-based Cadence Records.

Their breakup came dramatically during a concert at Knott’s Berry Farm in California. Phil Everly threw his guitar down and walked off, prompting Don Everly to tell the crowd, “The Everly Brothers died 10 years ago.”

During their breakup, they pursued solo singing careers with little fanfare. Phil also appeared in the Clint Eastwood movie “Every Which Way but Loose.” Don made a couple of records with friends in Nashville, performed in local nightclubs and played guitar and sang background vocals on recording sessions.

Don Everly said in a 1986 Associated Press interview that the two were successful because “we never followed trends. We did what we liked and followed our instincts. Rock ‘n’ roll did survive, and we were right about that. Country did survive, and we were right about that. You can mix the two but people said we couldn’t.”

In 1988, the brothers began hosting an annual homecoming benefit concert in Central City, Ky., to raise money for the area.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Larry D. Mann, who voiced Yukon Cornelius in the animated Christmas favorite “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” has died. He was 91.

His son, Richard Mann, says the actor died of age-related causes on Monday in Los Angeles.

Beginning in the 1950s, the Canadian-born Mann had small roles in movies, including “The Sting” and “In the Heat of the Night.”

On TV, his appearances included “Gunsmoke,” ”Bewitched” and Hill Street Blues.”

He also did voice work for animated shows, including 1964’s “Rudolph.”

His son says Mann’s last role before retirement was playing a talent agent in the 1991 TV show “Homefront.”

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Saul Zaentz, a music producer whose second career as a filmmaker brought him best-picture Academy Awards for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” ”Amadeus” and “The English Patient,” has died. He was 92.

Zaentz died Jan. 3 at his San Francisco apartment after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Paul Zaentz, the producer’s nephew and longtime business partner told the Associated Press.

Zaentz was never a prolific movie producer, but he took on classy productions, specializing in complex literary adaptations that Hollywood studios generally find too intricate to put on film.

Since moving into film at age 50 with 1972’s low-budget country-music drama “Payday,” Zaentz made just 10 movies, giving him a remarkable three-for-10 batting average on best-picture wins at the Oscars.

Among Zaentz’s other films were the 1978 animated version of “The Lord of the Rings,” which later paved the way for the blockbuster live action trilogy.

He also brought out the 1986 Harrison Ford drama “The Mosquito Coast”; 1998’s acclaimed “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” which co-starred “English Patient” Oscar winner Juliette Binoche; and 1991’s “At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” a critical and commercial flop despite a cast that included Kathy Bates, Tom Berenger and John Lithgow.

Zaentz was a throwback to old Hollywood, a producer who cared tremendously about his films and would go to extremes to get them right, often putting his own money up to help finance them.

He appreciated unique personal vision in directors, taking chances on relatively untested filmmakers.

Anthony Minghella had made just two small films when Zaentz picked him to direct “The English Patient,” whose awards included the best-director Oscar. Czech director Milos Forman had worked on films mostly in his home country when producers Zaentz and Michael Douglas chose him to make “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Forman also directed “Amadeus.”

With “Lord of the Rings,” whose film rights he acquired in the mid-1970s, Zaentz rejected all suitors interested in doing a live-action version until he saw New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s visually striking “Heavenly Creatures.”

Though Zaentz’s involvement was limited and he did not share in the producing credits, he gave full blessing to Jackson’s mammoth, three-film “Lord of the Rings” production. He later sued over royalties, however; the dispute was settled out of court in 2005.

A lavish theatrical version of the tale was mounted in Toronto in March 2006, but closed six months later. The show was trimmed and reworked for a run in London, where it ran for 13 months, though it had still failed to impress some critics.

Zaentz entered the movie business after growing bored with his successful recording-industry career, which included the Fantasy Records label he bought in 1967.

Largely a jazz label whose catalog includes albums by Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, Fantasy also released albums by Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose leader John Fogerty later feuded with Zaentz in bitter court fights.

Fogerty had to change the name of a song on his 1980s solo album, after Zaentz said he was being libeled. (It became “Vanz Kant Danz.”) Zaentz lost his lawsuit against Fogerty claiming the musician’s song “Old Man Down the Road” copied the melody from “Run Through the Jungle,” a Creedence tune that remained in the Fantasy library.

After Zaentz sold Fantasy in 2004, Fogerty made peace with the label’s new owners.

Zaentz had worked in the music industry for nearly two decades when he decided to try his hand at film. He tended to go after the rights to literary works he loved, and one of the first was Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Kirk Douglas owned the film rights. Zaentz said in a 1985 interview in the journal American Film that Douglas would only sell the rights if he could star.

Uninterested in those terms, Zaentz went off and produced “Payday,” which starred Rip Torn and cost $76,000, “of which we got $61,000 back” from the little seen film, Zaentz said. By then, Michael Douglas had obtained the “Cuckoo’s Nest” rights from his father, and he and Zaentz teamed up to make the film with Jack Nicholson.

The film won five Oscars and was the first since “It Happened One Night” 42 years earlier to sweep the top four categories: best picture, director (Forman), actor (Nicholson) and actress (Louise Fletcher).

Zaentz’s next film, the 1977 American Indian drama “Three Warriors,” quickly disappeared, and he later admitted his animated “Lord of the Rings” from 1978 had missed the mark.

Reteaming with Forman, Zaentz made “Amadeus,” adapted from Peter Shaffer’s play that whimsically examined the relationship between Mozart and rival composer Salieri. “Amadeus” won eight Oscars.

Zaentz topped that with “The English Patient,” which won nine. The film nearly fell apart after original backer 20th Century Fox shut it down because Zaentz declined to recast with a bigger-name cast.

Miramax rescued the film, with Zaentz putting up cash of his own to round out the budget.

The same night “The English Patient” triumphed at the Oscars, Zaentz received the Irving G. Thalberg Award, a lifetime-achievement honor for producers.

“My cup is full,” Zaentz said in accepting the award. After “The English Patient” won best picture, Zaentz added: “I said my cup was full before. Now it runneth over.”

Born Feb. 28, 1921, in Passaic, N.J., Zaentz earned a degree in poultry husbandry from Rutgers University. He served in Africa and Sicily and aboard troop ships in the North Atlantic and Pacific during World War II.

After the war, Zaentz attended business college and moved to San Francisco, where he worked for a small record distributor and later joined jazz producer Norman Granz, working on recordings and concerts.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

SAN DIEGO (AP) – Hall of Fame broadcaster Jerry Coleman, a former second baseman for the New York Yankees who interrupted his pro career to fly as a Marine Corps pilot in World War II and Korea, died Sunday, the San Diego Padres said. He was 89.

Coleman spent more than four decades with the Padres as a broadcaster. He managed the team in 1980.

Padres president Mike Dee said Coleman died at a hospital Sunday afternoon. He said the team was notified by Coleman’s wife, Maggie.

A family friend told The Associated Press on Sunday night that Coleman had surgery before Christmas for bleeding in the brain. Doctors discovered more bleeding last week and Coleman had more surgery, said the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the situation.

“It’s a sad day,” Padres manager Bud Black said. “We’re losing a San Diego icon. He’s going to be missed.”

The Padres planned to keep Coleman’s statue at Petco Park open until 11:30 p.m. Sunday so fans could pay tribute.

While recounting his military career in an interview days before the statue was unveiled in September 2012, Coleman said: “Your country is bigger than baseball.”

Coleman spent some seven decades in pro baseball, a career that included four World Series titles with the Yankees and was interrupted by his service in World War II and the Korean War.

He flew 120 missions combined in the two wars. Coleman was awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses, 13 Air Medals and three Navy Citations.

Around Petco Park and on Padres radio broadcasts, Coleman was known as “The Colonel,” having retired from the Marines with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was the only major leaguer to see combat in two wars.

“He was a wonderful human being and a great guy,” Black said. “He was one of a kind. He sort of blazed his own path from San Francisco and ended up as a war hero and a major league ballplayer and doing so many things in our game. As much as he’s remembered for all he accomplished as a baseball man, he was more proud of his military service.”

Coleman’s broadcast schedule had been reduced to home day games. He also did a pregame interview with Black, who said Coleman was self-deprecating and preferred to talk about the Padres rather than anything he’d done with the Yankees or in the Marines.

“You wouldn’t know it walking down the street that he was a World Series champion and also a guy that flew fighter planes,” Black said.

Coleman was known for calls of “Oh, Doctor!” and “You can hang a star on that!” after big plays. He received the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.

He also was known for malaprops, like the time he was describing Dave Winfield going back for a long fly ball.

“I said, ‘Winfield hit his head against the wall and it’s rolling toward the infield.’ I meant the ball, of course,” Coleman said in 2012.

In a statement, commissioner Bud Selig said Coleman “was a hero and a role model to myself and countless others in the game of baseball. … But above all, Jerry’s decorated service to our country in both World War II and Korea made him an integral part of the Greatest Generation. He was a true friend whose counsel I valued greatly.”

After graduating from high school in 1942, Coleman traveled three days by train from San Francisco to Wellsville, N.Y., to report to the New York Yankees’ Class D affiliate.

Still 17, he was too young to enlist and fight in World War II, so he got to spend the summer playing ball. After he joined the military, he flew Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers in the Pacific in World War II. He played three more seasons of minor league ball before making his big league debut with the Yankees on April 20, 1949. He was The Associated Press’ Rookie of the Year that season.

Coleman’s best season was 1950, when he was an All-Star and was named MVP of the Yankees’ four-game sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. Among his teammates were Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto and Johnny Mize.

“We won the first game 1-0 and I drove in that run,” Coleman recalled in 2012. “We won the second game 2-1. I scored one of the two runs and DiMaggio hit a home run in the 10th to win it. In the third game I drove in the winning run in the last inning, and in the fourth game I rested.”

By “rested,” he means he went 0 for 3. “I was exhausted,” he said.

In October 1951, Coleman found out that Marine pilots from World War II were not discharged, but on inactive status and that he’d be going to Korea for 18 months. He missed the bulk of two seasons.

Coleman said he took his physical along with Ted Williams in Jacksonville in 1952. Williams, a San Diego native, also was a Marine pilot in World War II, but didn’t see combat duty. He did fly combat missions in Korea.

When Coleman returned to the Yankees, he hit only .217. He was sent to an eye doctor, who told him he’d lost his depth perception.

“If you’re trying to hit a baseball and you don’t have depth perception, you have a problem,” Coleman said.

He got that corrected but then broke his collarbone in April 1955. The night he came back from that injury, he got beaned.

His last season was 1957, when he hit .364 in a seven-game World Series loss to the Milwaukee Braves.

Coleman worked in the Yankees’ front office before beginning a broadcasting career that eventually brought him to San Diego.

“First and foremost, he was an American hero whose service to this country is his lasting legacy. He was also a great Yankee, a true ambassador for baseball, and someone whose imprint on our game will be felt for generations,” Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said. “On behalf of the entire New York Yankees organization, we send our deepest condolences to the Coleman family.”

Coleman managed the Padres in 1980, when they went 73-89 and finished last in the NL West. Coleman was fired and returned to the booth.

“I should never have taken it,” he said. “I look at it now and see the mistakes I made. If I wanted to be a manager, I should have gone to the minor leagues and developed there.”

Coleman’s statue at Petco Park depicts him in a flight suit.

Coleman said the closest he came to being killed was in Korea when the engine in his Corsair quit during takeoff and his plane flipped. He preferred to talk about his comrades.

Coleman remembered a mission over Korea when a plane piloted by his buddy, Max Harper, blew up and flew straight into the ground.

“I knew there was no need for help. It was an unpleasant thing,” Coleman said.

In describing the two-seat Dauntless he flew in the Solomon Islands and the Philippines, Coleman said the gunner “was the bravest man I knew. If I did something wrong, he died, too.”

Longtime San Francisco Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper mentioned the various halls of fame Coleman belonged to and added: “More than anything he’s just a Hall of Fame guy. If he had a bad day, it was never around us. He was always in a good mood. He was quite funny. Northern California guy. Really just a great guy. I’m shocked and saddened that he passed away.

“Here’s a guy, what didn’t he do in life?” Kuiper said.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Emmy-nominated actress Carmen Zapata, who started a foundation to promote Hispanic writers because jobs were so scarce, has died of heart problems, colleagues say. She was 86.

Zapata died Sunday at her Van Nuys-area home, said Luis Vela, marketing manager for the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts in Los Angeles.

Zapata started her career in 1945 in the Broadway musical “Oklahoma” and went on to perform in “Bells Are Ringing,” ”Guys and Dolls” and many plays.

“She was an inspiration for me,” Vela said. “She taught me that art is the key to resolving differences in the community.”

He said Zapata was once asked how she wanted to be remembered – as an artist, producer or founder. “‘I prefer people remember us as educators,'” Vela recalled her saying.

Her movie credits included “Sister Act,” ”Gang Boys” and “Carola.” She also appeared in dozens of television series, including nine seasons on the PBS bilingual children’s show, “Villa Alegre.”

Zapata had continuing TV roles in “The Man and the City” and “The New Dick Van Dyke Show.” She sang in several other musicals, including “Bloomer Girl.” ”No Strings,” ”Show Boat,” ”Stop the World, I Want to Get Off” and “Funny Girl.”

Born in New York City of Mexican-Argentinian descent, Zapata joined forces with Cuban-born actress, playwright and director Margarita Galban to found the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts in 1973.

The organization produces four plays a year that are presented at its 99-seat theater. Productions alternate in English and Spanish, with some shows taken on the road by production companies.

Zapata collected Emmy nominations for best supporting actress in a segment of “Medical Center” and for “Carola” on “Hollywood TV Theatre.”

Vela said he last saw Zapata on Christmas Eve.

“Everyone who worked with her felt she had created something really important and was making our community a better place.” he said. “She was emphatic that what we were doing at the foundation was more important than personal recognition.”

She was not working on any one project when she died, Vela said, but was supervising and approving projects being presented to her.

Funeral and service arrangements were being finalized.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

EVANSTON, Ill. (AP) – Nobel laureate and longtime Northwestern University economics professor Dale Mortensen has died.

Mortensen shared the Nobel economics prize with two other Americans in 2010 for their work explaining how unemployment can remain high despite a large number of job openings.

Mortensen died Thursday at his home in Wilmette, Ill., said his personal assistant and close family friend, Sue Triforo. He was 74.

Northwestern President Morton Schapiro paid tribute to Mortensen, saying “his groundbreaking work is especially relevant to policymakers attempting to address unemployment today.”

Besides his pioneering approaches to investigating the labor market, Mortensen had a way of breaking down complex economic ideas into terms anyone could relate to.

He even quoted the late Chicago author and fellow Pulitzer prize winner Studs Terkel while thanking the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation.

“Work was a search, sometimes successful, sometimes not, for daily meaning as well as daily bread,” Mortensen said, quoting Terkel, who was known for recording the stories of ordinary Americans.

Mortensen was away teaching in Aarhus, Denmark, when he found out he won the prize. When delivering the news to his wife on the phone he said simply, “I won.”

Such understatement and humility was a prominent characteristic, according to Triforo.

“The words really fail me at the moment because the grief is overwhelming, but he was a remarkable, humble, brilliant mind and man is all I can say,” she said.

Mortensen was born in Enterprise, Ore. He had been at Northwestern in suburban Chicago since 1965. He also was an accomplished musician.

Survivors include his wife, Beverly, their son and two daughters, and eight grandchildren.

A public memorial will be announced later.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

miri Baraka, the militant man of letters and tireless agitator whose blues-based, fist-shaking poems, plays and criticism made him a provocative and groundbreaking force in American culture, has died. He was 79.

His booking agent, Celeste Bateman, told The Associated Press that Baraka, who had been hospitalized since last month, died Thursday at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.

Perhaps no writer of the 1960s and ’70s was more radical or polarizing than the former LeRoi Jones, and no one did more to extend the political debates of the civil rights era to the world of the arts. He inspired at least one generation of poets, playwrights and musicians, and his immersion in spoken word traditions and raw street language anticipated rap, hip-hop and slam poetry. The FBI feared him to the point of flattery, identifying Baraka as “the person who will probably emerge as the leader of the Pan-African movement in the United States.”

Baraka transformed from the rare black to join the Beat caravan of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac to leader of the Black Arts Movement, an ally of the Black Power movement that rejected the liberal optimism of the early ’60s and intensified a divide over how and whether the black artist should take on social issues. Scorning art for art’s sake and the pursuit of black-white unity, Barak was part of a philosophy that called for the teaching of black art and history and producing works that bluntly called for revolution.

“We want ‘poems that kill,'” Baraka wrote in his landmark “Black Art,” a manifesto published in 1965, the year he helped found the Black Arts Movement. “Assassin poems. Poems that shoot guns/Poems that wrestle cops into alleys/and take their weapons leaving them dead/with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland.”

He was as eclectic as he was prolific: His influences ranged from Ray Bradbury and Mao Zedong to Ginsberg and John Coltrane. Baraka wrote poems, short stories, novels, essays, plays, musical and cultural criticism and jazz operas. His 1963 book “Blues People” has been called the first major history of black music to be written by an African-American. A line from his poem “Black People!” – “Up against the wall mother f—–” – became a counterculture slogan for everyone from student protesters to the rock band Jefferson Airplane. A 2002 poem he wrote alleging that some Israelis had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks led to widespread outrage.

He was denounced by critics as buffoonish, homophobic, anti-Semitic, a demagogue. He was called by others a genius, a prophet, the Malcolm X of literature. Eldridge Cleaver hailed him as the bard of the “funky facts.” Ishmael Reed credited the Black Arts Movement for encouraging artists of all backgrounds and enabling the rise of multiculturalism. The scholar Arnold Rampersad placed him alongside Frederick Douglass and Richard Wright in the pantheon of black cultural influences.

“From Amiri Baraka, I learned that all art is political, although I don’t write political plays,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist August Wilson once said.

First published in the 1950s, Baraka crashed the literary party in 1964, at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village, when “Dutchman” opened and made instant history at the height of the civil rights movement. Baraka’s play was a one-act showdown between a middle class black man, Clay, and a sexually daring white woman, Lula, ending in a brawl of murderous taunts and confessions.

“Charlie Parker. All the hip white boys scream for Bird,” Clay says. “And they sit there talking about the tortured genius of Charlie Parker. Bird would’ve not played a note of music if he just walked up to East 67th Street and killed the first 10 white people he saw. Not a note!”

Baraka was still LeRoi Jones when he wrote “Dutchman.” But the Cuban revolution, the assassination in 1965 of Malcolm X and the Newark riots of 1967, when the poet was jailed and photographed looking dazed and bloodied, radicalized him. Jones left his white wife (Hettie Cohen), cut off his white friends and moved from Greenwich Village to Harlem. He renamed himself Imamu Ameer Baraka, “spiritual leader blessed prince,” and dismissed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a “brainwashed Negro.” He helped organize the 1972 National Black Political Convention and founded the Congress of African People. He also founded community groups in Harlem and Newark, the hometown to which he eventually returned.

The Black Arts Movement was essentially over by the mid-1970s, and Baraka distanced himself from some of his harsher comments – about Dr. King, about gays and about whites in general. But he kept making news. In the early 1990s, as Spike Lee was filming a biography of Malcolm X, Baraka ridiculed the director as “a petit bourgeois Negro” unworthy of his subject. In 2002, respected enough to be named New Jersey’s poet laureate, he shocked again with “Somebody Blew Up America,” a Sept. 11 poem with a jarring twist.

“Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed,” read a line from the poem. “Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day?”

Then-Gov. James E. McGreevey and others demanded his resignation. Baraka refused, denying that “Somebody Blew Up” was anti-Semitic (the poem also attacks Hitler and the Holocaust) and condemning the “dishonest, consciously distorted and insulting non-interpretation of my poem.” Discovering he couldn’t be fired, the state eliminated the position altogether, in 2003.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – Franklin McCain, who helped spark a movement of nonviolent sit-in protests across the South by occupying a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960, has died, his son said Friday. He was 73.

McCain died of respiratory complications late Thursday, Frank McCain of Greensboro said Friday.

Franklin McCain was one of four freshmen students from North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro who sat down at the local “whites only” lunch counter on Feb. 1, 1960.

“The best feeling of my life,” McCain said in a 2010 interview with The Associated Press, was “sitting on that dumb stool.”

“I felt so relieved,” he added. “I felt so at peace and so self-accepted at that very moment. Nothing has ever happened to me since then that topped that good feeling of being clean and fully accepted and feeling proud of me.”

McCain, Joseph McNeil, David Richmond and Ezell Blair Jr. (now known as Jibreel Khazan) planned their surprise action carefully. They bought school supplies and toiletries so that their receipts would offer proof that the lunch counter was the only part of the store where racial segregation still ruled.

The young men stayed until the store closed, but returned the next day and subsequent days. They were joined by more protesters, whose numbers built to at least 1,000 by the fifth day. Within weeks, sit-ins launched in more than 50 cities in nine states. The Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro was desegregated within six months.

The sit-in led to the formation in Raleigh of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which became the cutting edge of the student direct-action civil rights movement. The demonstrations between 1960 and 1965 helped pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“To the world, he was a civil rights pioneer who, along with his three classmates, dared to make a difference by starting the sit-in movement,” McCain’s family said in a prepared statement. “To us, he was ‘Daddy’ – a man who deeply loved his family and cherished his friends.”

McCain graduated in 1964, became a research chemist and sales executive, and moved to Charlotte. His wife of 48 years, Bettye, died a year ago. He served on his alma mater’s board of trustees, then spent four years on the governing board of the 17-campus University of North Carolina system. His term on the public university board ended last year.

“What I think people should remember most about Franklin is that his courage and commitment to doing what was right didn’t end at Woolworth’s,” said state university system president Tom Ross, who grew up in Greensboro. “That commitment continued throughout his life, and he channeled it in ways that really mattered, particularly in his service and devotion to our university and to higher education.”

Richmond died in 1990. McNeil is now 71 and Khazan is 72, said Steffany Reeve, a spokeswoman for the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which occupies the former Woolworth’s store.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Larry Speakes, who spent six years as acting press secretary for President Ronald Reagan, died Friday in his native Mississippi. He was 74.

Speakes died at home in Cleveland, Miss., where he had lived the past several years, said Bolivar County Coroner Nate Brown. Brown said Speakes had Alzheimer’s disease.

“He died in his sleep and it was a natural death,” Brown said.

Speakes was buried in North Cleveland Cemetery during a private service Friday morning, a few hours after dying, said Kenny Williams of Cleveland Funeral Home.

Speakes became Reagan’s acting spokesman after Press Secretary James Brady was wounded during an assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981.

In a statement issued from Los Angeles, former first lady Nancy Reagan said that she was “saddened to learn about Larry, who served Ronnie with great loyalty in one of the toughest jobs in the White House.”

“He stepped up in very difficult circumstances and was an articulate and respected spokesman day in and day out, including some very historically significant moments,” Reagan said. “It is a source of special sadness to know he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.” Ronald Reagan died in 2004 after a 10-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Republican Haley Barbour, who served as Mississippi governor from 2004 to 2012, was political director of the Reagan White House when Speakes worked there. He said Friday that it wasn’t unusual to have tension between the political office and the press office, but he and Speakes had a good working relationship.

Barbour said that within the Reagan administration, people generally admired Speakes’ handling of the press, although Speakes could be abrupt.

“Sometimes, that meant reporters didn’t get everything they wanted, and sometimes it meant they didn’t get anything,” Barbour said Friday. “But, Larry knew who he worked for.”

Peter Roussel, who worked with Speakes in the Ford and Reagan press offices, said Speakes conducted more than 2,000 press briefings. “Larry set high performance standards for himself and for those who worked for him,” Roussel said.

Dennis Brack, a photographer who has covered the White House for the Black Star photo agency since the 1960s, said Speakes had a good relationship with photographers during the years when Reagan, a former actor, was president.

But when photographers took pictures of President Gerald Ford falling down the steps of Air Force One in Austria in 1976, Speakes complained that the press was determined to make the president “look like a klutz,” said Brack, author of “Presidential Picture Stories: Behind the Cameras at the White House,” published in December.

Weeks after leaving his White House job in 1987, Speakes said during a speech at East Texas State University that he often thought about the day Reagan, Brady and two others were wounded when John Hinckley Jr. opened fire.

“Shortly before the president left that day to go the Hilton Hotel to make a speech, I said to Jim, ‘Do you want to go with the president, or would you like me to go?’ And he said, ‘I believe I’ll go,'” Speakes said. “And had it not been in that one split second, I would have been exactly where Jim Brady was at that moment an hour or so later. … It’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about that.”

After leaving the White House, Speakes worked for Merrill Lynch in New York. Speakes left the Merrill Lynch job after he wrote in his memoir, “Speaking Out,” that he had fabricated quotes for President Reagan while working for him.

He returned to Washington in 1988 and worked in public relations for Northern Telecom and the U. S. Postal Service, retiring in 2008.

Speakes grew up in Merigold, Miss., and graduated from the University of Mississippi. He worked for two Mississippi newspapers, the Oxford Eagle and the Bolivar Commercial, before going to Washington in 1968 as press secretary for U.S. Sen. James O. Eastland, D-Miss.

In 1974, Speakes worked as press secretary for the special counsel to President Richard Nixon during the Watergate hearings. After Nixon resigned, Speakes became assistant press secretary for President Gerald Ford.

Speakes worked as press secretary for Ford’s vice presidential running mate, Bob Dole, during the 1976 campaign. After Democrat Jimmy Carter won the election, he moved to the Hill and Knowlton public relations firm in Washington. Speakes worked for Reagan’s transition team after Reagan won the 1980 election, then became deputy press secretary under Brady.

Speakes is survived by a daughter, Sandy Speakes Huerta of Cleveland, Miss; sons Scott Speakes of Cleveland, Miss., and Jeremy Speakes of Clifton, Va.; six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – When it came to portraying the rugged western outdoorsman who helped transform a pack of filtered cigarettes into the world’s most popular brand, Marlboro Man Eric Lawson was the real deal.

Ruggedly handsome, the actor could ride a horse through the wide-open spaces of the Southwest, from Texas to Colorado to Arizona or wherever else the Phillip Morris tobacco company sent him to light up while representing a true American icon, the cowboy. And he really did smoke Marlboro cigarettes, as many as three packs a day.

Lawson was still smoking in 2006 when he was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He died of the disease at his home in San Luis Obispo on Jan. 10. He was 72.

For three years in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Lawson portrayed one of the most iconic figures in both advertising and popular culture.

And for the past several years, Lawson had spoken out fiercely about the hazards of smoking, doing a public service announcement for the American Cancer Society in the 1990s, years before he was able to bring himself to quit.

“He tried to speak to the kids, telling them don’t start smoking,” his wife, Susan Lawson, told The Associated Press. “He already knew cigarettes had a hold on him.”

Exactly how many rugged he-man types portrayed the Marlboro Man over the years isn’t clear, although Lawson was one of dozens.

His wife said Monday he was friendly with some of the others, including Wayne McLaren, a former rodeo rider who died in 1992 of lung cancer that he blamed on his lifelong smoking habit.

Like Lawson, McLaren spent his final years advocating against smoking. So did David McLean, who died in 1995 of lung cancer that he also blamed on smoking. He was 73.

As the Marlboro Man, Lawson and the others helped turn a brand that had once been marketed as a mild women’s cigarette into the ultimate symbol of American machismo.

Not every Marlboro Man was a cowboy – there were also pilots, hunters, weight lifters, miners and other macho characters. But cowboys were clearly the most popular and the most often used.

“The most powerful – and in some quarters, most hated – brand image of the century, the Marlboro Man stands worldwide as the ultimate American cowboy and masculine trademark, helping establish Marlboro as the best-selling cigarette in the world,” the industry publication Advertising Age declared in 1999.

Part of the reason for the brand’s success was that Phillip Morris’ ad agency went to great pains to track down real cowboys, who not only looked rugged but could really do things like rope and ride.

“He had to go out and ride, he needed to prove himself as a cowboy,” Lawson’s wife recalled of her husband’s audition to become a Marlboro Man.

By the time he got the job in 1978, cigarette advertising was no longer allowed on U.S. television, so Lawson appeared in print and billboard ads. His wife still has one from Time magazine.

The ads, often filmed in stunning, picturesque settings in the West always emphasized that it was a real man, not in any way a wimp, who smoked a Marlboro.

Lawson was perfect for the part. The veteran actor had appeared in such Western films and TV shows as “The Shooter,” ”Walker, Texas Ranger,” ”Tall Tale,” ”Bonanza: Under Attack” and “The A Team.”

Later, he also became a perfect role model who made a difference in the lives of the people he kept from smoking simply by pointing out what it did to him, said John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.

“That’s important,” Seffrin said, “because people stop and think if that happens to Eric Lawson it could happen to me.”

In addition to his wife, Lawson is survived by six children, 18 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

DALLAS (AP) – Good friends like Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard got more credit for their contrary ways and trend-setting ideas, but it was Ray Price who set the precedent for change in country music more than a decade earlier.

Price passed away Monday at his Texas home, having long outlasted most of his country music contemporaries and the prognosis doctors gave him when they discovered his pancreatic cancer in 2011. He was 87.

The way the Country Music Hall of Fame member fought cancer was an apt metaphor for the way he lived his life, always fiercely charting a path few others might have the fortitude to follow.

Along the way he changed the sound of country music, collaborated with and inspired the genre’s biggest stars and remained relevant for more than half a century.

“Ray Price was a giant in Texas and country western music. Besides one of the greatest voices that ever sang a note, Ray’s career spanned over 65 years in a business where 25 years would be amazing,” said Ray Benson of the country music group Asleep at the Wheel.

Price, one of country music’s most popular and influential singers and bandleaders, had more than 100 hits and was one of the last living connections to Hank Williams.

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum historian Michael McCall said Price “was one of his generation’s most important musical innovators,” popularizing the bedrock 4/4 shuffle beat that can still be heard on every honky-tonk jukebox and most country radio stations in the world.

“His emphasis on the shuffle rhythm influenced every generation to follow and remains a staple of country dance floors everywhere, especially in the Southwest,” said McCall.

Price died Monday afternoon at his ranch outside Mount Pleasant, Texas, said Billy Mack Jr., who was acting as a family spokesman. Billie Perryman, the wife of family friend and spokesman Tom Perryman, a DJ with KKUS-FM in Tyler, also confirmed his death.

Price’s cancer had recently spread to his liver, intestines and lungs, according East Texas Medical Center in Tyler. He stopped aggressive treatments and left the hospital last Thursday to receive hospice care at home.

At the time, his wife, Janie Price, relayed what she called her husband’s “final message” to his fans: “I love my fans and have devoted my life to reaching out to them. I appreciate their support all these years, and I hope I haven’t let them down. I am at peace. I love Jesus. I’m going to be just fine. Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you again one day.”

Perhaps best known for his version of the Kris Kristofferson song “For the Good Times,” a pop hit in 1970, the velvet-voiced Price was a giant among traditional country performers in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, as likely to defy a trend as he was to defend one. He helped invent the genre’s honky-tonk sound early in his career, then took it in a more polished direction.

He reached the Billboard Hot 100 eight times from 1958-73 and had seven No. 1 hits and more than 100 titles on the Billboard country chart from 1952 to 1989. “For the Good Times” was his biggest crossover hit, reaching No. 11 on the Billboard pop music singles chart. His other country hits included “Crazy Arms,” ”Release Me,” ”The Same Old Me,” ”Heartaches by the Number,” ”City Lights” and “Too Young to Die.”

Price was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996, long after he had become dissatisfied with Nashville and returned to his home state of Texas.

His importance went well beyond hit singles. He was among the pioneers who popularized electric instruments and drums in country music. After helping establish the 4/4 shuffle in country music, Price angered traditionalists by breaking away from country. He gave early breaks to Nelson, Roger Miller and other major performers.

His “Danny Boy” in the late 1960s was a heavily orchestrated version that crossed over to the pop charts. He then started touring with a string-laden 20-piece band that outraged his dancehall fans.

In the 1970s he sang often with symphony orchestras – in a tuxedo and cowboy boots.

Like Nelson, his good friend and contemporary, Price simply didn’t care what others thought and pursued the chance to make his music the way he wanted to.

“I have fought prejudice since I got in country music and I will continue to fight it,” he told The Associated Press in 1981. “A lot of people want to keep country music in the minority of people. But it belongs to the world. It’s art.”

In the same 1981 interview, he credited the cowboy for the popularity of country music.

“Everyone loves the cowboy. He’s nice, humble and straightforward. And country music is the same thing. The kids have discovered what mom and pop told ’em.”

Price continued performing and recording well into his 70s.

“I have to be in the business at least five or 10 more years,” Price said in 2000, when he and his band were doing 100 shows a year.

“Two or three years ago, we did 182,” he said. “Fans come to the shows, bless their hearts, they always come.”

In 2007, he joined Haggard and Nelson on a double-CD set, “Last of the Breed.” The trio performed on tour with the Texas swing band Asleep at the Wheel.

“I’ll be surprised if we don’t all get locked up somewhere,” Price joked at the time.

Over the years, Price came in and out of vogue as traditional country music waxed and waned on the radio. He was a constant advocate for the old days and ways of country music, and more recently re-entered the news when he took offense to comments Blake Shelton made about classic country music that included the words “old farts.” The dustup drew attention on the Internet and introduced Price to a new generation of country fans.

“You should be so lucky as us old-timers,” Price said in a happily cantankerous post in all capital letters. “Check back in 63 years (the year 2075) and let us know how your name and your music will be remembered.”

Price earned his long-standing fame honestly, weaving himself into the story of modern country music in several ways.

As a young man, Price became friends with Williams, toured with the country legend and shared a house with him in Nashville. Williams even let Price use his band, the Drifting Cowboys, and the two wrote a song together, the modest Price hit “Weary Blues (From Waiting)”.

By 1952 Price was a regular member of the Grand Ole Opry.

The singer had one of country music’s great bands, the Cherokee Cowboys, early in his career. His lineup included at times Nelson, Miller and Johnny Paycheck.

His 1956 version of “Crazy Arms” became a landmark song for both Price and country music. His first No. 1 country hit, the song rode a propulsive beat into the pop top 100 as well. Using a drummer and bassist to create a country shuffle rhythm, he eventually established a sound that would become a trademark.

“It was strictly country and it went pop,” Price said of the song. “I never have figured that one out yet.”

Price was born near Perryville, Texas, in 1926 and was raised in Dallas. He joined the Marines for World War II and then studied to be a veterinarian at North Texas Agricultural College before he decided on music as a career.

Soft-spoken and urbane, Price told the AP in 1976: “I’m my own worst critic. I don’t like to hear myself sing or see myself on television. I see too many mistakes.”

He was one of the few who saw them.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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OAKLAND (CBS Sacramento) – Harold Camping, the radio preacher who predicted the world would end in 2011, has died at age 91, according to the Family Radio Network.

He suffered a fall in his home on November 30th and died of his injuries on December 15th, according to the statement.

Camping gained national attention when with advertisements and warnings on his radio network that God’s judgement would be visited on the world in May 2011.

At that time, he predicted, those who had attained salvation through Jesus would be whisked away to heaven, and the Earth would be destroyed after much trial and tribulation in October 2011.

Neither of those events have apparently come to pass.

In March of 2012 Camping apologized for his dire warnings, saying they were “incorrect and sinful,” reports Religion News.

Camping is survived by his wife of 71 years.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Film, television and stage actor Joseph Ruskin has died of natural causes at the age of 89.

Ruskin garnered 124 television credits, including “Mission: Impossible” and “Star Trek,” and appeared in 25 films, namely “The Magnificent Seven,” “Prizzi’s Honor” and “Smokin’ Aces.”

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said Tuesday that Ruskin died at UCLA Santa Monica Hospital on Saturday.

His last performance was on the stage this year in the Anteus Theatre Company’s production of “The Crucible.”

Ruskin was born in Haverhill, Mass. He studied drama at Carnegie Mellon University and began his professional acting career at Pittsburgh Playhouse and the Rochester Arena Stage before finding success in television.

He served as SAG’s first national vice president for eight years and was the first western regional vice president of Actors Equity Association.

NEW YORK (AP) – James Avery, the bulky character actor who laid down the law at home and on the job as the Honorable Philip Banks in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” has died.

Avery’s publicist, Cynthia Snyder, told The Associated Press that Avery died Tuesday in Glendale, Calif., following complications from open heart surgery. He was 68, Snyder said.

Avery, who stood more than 6 feet tall, played the family patriarch and a wealthy attorney and judge on the popular TV comedy that launched the acting career of Will Smith as Banks’ troublemaking nephew.

The sitcom, which aired on NBC from 1990 to 1996, was set in the Banks’ mansion, to which Smith’s character was sent from Philadelphia when things got tough in his own neighborhood. Fans came to know the imposing Banks as “Uncle Phil.”

Avery liked to say that the way to be an actor was to act, and he had a busy and diverse career before, during and after “Fresh Prince.” His TV credits included “Grey’s Anatomy,” ”NYPD Blue” and “Dallas,” and among his many films were “Fletch,” ”Nightflyers” and “8 Million Ways to Die.” His voice alone brought him many jobs, notably as Shredder in the animated TV series “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

According to Snyder, he will be seen in the film “Wish I Was Here,” directed by Zach Braff and scheduled to premiere later this month at the Sundance festival.

Avery grew up in Atlantic City, N.J., and served in the Navy in Vietnam in the late 1960s. After returning to the states, he settled in California and studied drama and literature at the University of California at San Diego.

He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and stepson Kevin Waters.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A coroner’s report says the Porsche carrying “Fast & Furious” star Paul Walker may have been going 100 mph or more before it crashed, killing both Walker and the driver.

The report released Friday by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office says that Roger Rodas, Walker’s friend and financial adviser, was driving the 2005 Porsche Carrera GT at an unsafe speed, estimated by witnesses to be 100 mph or more.

The report also says no alcohol or drugs were detected in the system of either man on the day of the fiery one-car crash.

It says the Nov. 30 deaths have been ruled accidents and were due to combined traumatic and thermal injuries.

Investigators found no mechanical problems with the Porsche or problems with the roadway.

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Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.