Dead Celebrity Alert

Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York City shoe shine boy who became an iconoclastic scholar-politician and served four terms in the Senate, died Wednesday. He was 76.

The New York Democrat and former U.N. ambassador had been in ill health. He was hospitalized in January for an intestinal disorder, and again soon after for a back injury. His latest setback was an infection after an emergency appendectomy on March 11 at the Washington Hospital Center.

Moynihan served in the Senate from 1977 to 2001. He was succeeded by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who announced her Senate candidacy in a torch-passing news conference at Moynihan’s farm in July 1999. … Read full obituary

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The creator of the long-running reality television series “COPS” fell 300 feet from an Oregon cliff into the Pacific Ocean and was missing, police and the Coast Guard said.

Paul Stojanovich, 47, and his fiancee Kim Srowel were hiking Saturday at Treasures Cove, a bluff overlooking the ocean, when he slipped while stopping to pose for a picture, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Jamie Desanno.

Stojanovich grabbed a tree limb to break his fall but plummeted into the surf below, said Sgt. Mike Zimmerman of the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Office. The waves were 14 to 16 feet at the time, and rain over the past week had left the trail slippery and wet.

Officers searched for three hours after Srowel called 911, but they didn’t find any sign of Stojanovich, Desanno said. … Read full obituary

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In a career lasting almost a century, Dame Thora Hird’s solid screen presence and distinctive northern tones made her an enduring favourite with British audiences. …

For years she played cleaning ladies or housekeepers, with her father proving a dominant influence throughout the early years.

The actress could play Shakespeare, too, notably as the nurse in BBC TV’s 1967 production of Romeo and Juliet. And in the early 1970s she received good notices for her performance in a revival of No, No, Nanette.

But it was through her TV career in long-running sitcoms such as Meet the Wife, in which she was married to Freddie Frinton, and In Loving Memory, which ran for four series, that she became a household name. …

She was known to millions as Edie in Last of the Summer Wine, a woman hardly more tolerant of cheeky character Compo than his neighbour, Nora Batty. … Read full obituary

Production on CBS’ The District shut down Thursday as producers, cast and crew mourned the unexpected death of costar Lynne Thigpen.

Thigpen, who played the tough-talking Ella Farmer on the D.C. crime drama, “died suddenly last night at her home in Los Angeles,” CBS announced in a statement. She was 54. Thigpen had been in good health and the cause of death was not immediately known, according to the show publicist. …

A stage and screen vet with credits dating back to the 1970s, Thigpen won a Tony Award for the drama An American Daughter and scored another nomination for Tintypes. Her stage work also earned her two Obie Awards for the off-Broadway productions Jar the Floor and Boesman and Lena and an L.A. Drama Critics Award for August Wilson’s Fences. … Read full obituary

LOS ANGELES, March 11 (AP) — Jean Sullivan, a Hollywood actress who became a ballet and flamenco dancer and a museum executive in New York, died on Feb. 27 in Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles. She was 79.

The cause was cardiac arrest, the Motion Picture and Television Hospital announced.

As an actress, Ms. Sullivan was discovered by a Warner Brothers scout while she performed in a play at the University of California at Los Angeles. That ultimately led to her starring opposite Errol Flynn in the film “Uncertain Glory” (1944). She also starred in “Escape in the Desert” (1945). … Read full obituary

The Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, has been assassinated in the capital, Belgrade.

He was shot in front of government offices at around 1300 (1200 gmt) on Wednesday.

He was taken to hospital for emergency surgency but a government minister told the BBC’s Serbian section that he had died of his wounds.

Mr Djindjic, a former mayor of the Serbian capital, was a prominent reformist opposition leader until Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from power in 2000.

On 21 February Mr Djindjic survived what he said was an assassination bid when a lorry swung into the path of his motorcade as he was travelling to Belgrade airport…. Read full story

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who spearheaded the popular revolt that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000, was seriously wounded Wednesday in an assassination attempt.

Independent B-92 radio said Djindjic, who played a key role in Milosevic’s extradition to the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, was shot in the chest while entering the government building in Belgrade. His was reported in “very serious” condition. The state Tanjug news agency also confirmed that Djindjic was seriously injured.

Sources from Djindjic’s Cabinet told The Associated Press that Djindjic sustained two shots in his stomach and back, and that doctors were “fighting for his life” in Belgrade’s emergency hospital. … Read full story

Story to come.

Actor and pop star Adam Faith has died from a heart attack at the age of 62. The 60s entertainer died early on Saturday after falling ill the previous evening.

Faith had been staying at a hotel in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, where he was starring in the Regent Theatre’s Love and Marriage.

He was taken ill at the hotel after Friday’s performance and was rushed to hospital, but doctors fought in vain to resuscitate the actor who had a history of heart trouble. …

During the 1960s Faith was one of Britain’s top three pop stars alongside Cliff Richard and Billy Fury, with chart hits including number one singles What Do You Want and Poor Me.

In the 70s he starred as the chirpy cockney, just out of prison, in the classic television series Budgie, written by Keith Waterhouse. … Read full obituary

Barry Sheene, Britain’s 500cc motorcycle world champion in 1976 and 1977, died today of cancer.

An Australian resident for many years, Sheene, aged 52, died in hospital on Queensland’s Gold Coast about 2pm (AEDT). … Read full obituary

Fred Freiberger, who wrote for such Golden Age of Television shows as “Zane Grey” and “Fireside Theatre” but was perhaps best remembered for producing the cult film classic “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms,” has died at age 88.

Freiberger, whose TV writing credits also included “Bonanza,” “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “Wanted: Dead or Alive” and “Rawhide,” died Sunday at his Bel-air home.

The New York native, who spent 22 months as a German prisoner of war during World War II, moved to Hollywood after the war and took a job as a movie publicist. … Read full obituary

Kenneth Auchincloss, an editor at Newsweek who oversaw the magazine’s coverage of the past five US presidential elections, has died at the age of 65.

Auchincloss died yesterday at his New York home after a long battle with cancer, said Newsweek chairman and editor-in-chief Richard Smith and editor Mark Whitaker. …

Auchincloss joined Newsweek in 1966 as a writer in the international section of the US edition and later moved to the national affairs department, where he rose to senior editor. He became executive editor of Newsweek’s US edition and was managing editor from 1975 to 1996. He was named editor at large in January 1996. … Read full obituary

John E. Fryer, a psychiatrist who electrified his colleagues by telling the 1972 convention of the American Psychiatric Association in a mask that he was a homosexual at a time homosexuality was classified as a mental illness, died on Feb. 21 in Philadelphia. He was 65.

The cause was aspiration pneumonia, which he suffered after a degenerative lung disease, his sister Katherine F. Helmbock, said.

No gay American psychiatrist had risked speaking publicly before Dr. Fryer’s appearance. When Dr. Fryer, wearing a baggy suit, a rubbery mask and a huge wig and using a microphone that distorted his voice, spoke at the association’s meeting in Dallas, it was a dramatic moment in the gay rights movement, and it helped change psychiatrists’ attitude toward homosexuality. …

In December 1973, after more protests and debate, the board of the psychiatric association voted to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders and to urge that “homosexuals be given all protections now guaranteed other citizens.” The members ratified the decision in April 1974. … Read full obituary