Dead Celebrity Alert

RAF pilot who was shot down, sent to Stalag Luft III and took part in the Great Escape of 1944 … Read full obituary

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Desmond Plunkett

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In classic Hollywood fashion Guy McElwaine rose from the mail room at Paramount Pictures in the 1950s to become head of Columbia Pictures in the 1980s, overseeing such classics as Gandhi (1982) and Ghostbusters (1984). …

Guy McElwaine, Hollywood executive, was born on June 29, 1936. He died of pancreatic cancer on April 2, 2008, aged 71 … Read full obituary

Michael Hill, BBC producer and writer, was born on June 17, 1923. He died on March 16, 2008, aged 84 … Read full obituary

John Plumb was one of the most notable of the abstract painters to emerge in Britain after the war. His work, though represented in the Tate and other important collections, was never as widely admired as it deserved to be, partly no doubt because of the resurgent interest in figuration that followed the commercial success of Pop Art during the 1960s. …

John Plumb, painter, was born on February 6, 1927. He died on April 6, 2008, aged 81 … Read full obituary

Cedella Booker, the mother of Jamaican music legend Bob Marley, has died… She was 81. Booker died in her sleep Tuesday night at her home in Miami, apparently from natural causes…

After Norval Marley died in 1955, Booker married an American man and settled in Delaware. She wrote two biographies of her famous son and recorded two albums, “Awake Zion!” and “Smilin’ Island of Song.”… Read full obituary

Stanley Kamel, well known for playing Dr. Charles Kroger on the hit USA series “Monk,” has died… Kamel was found dead in his Hollywood Hills home on Tuesday. He was 65. …

Kamel has appeared in numerous TV roles over the past three decades, including “The West Wing,” “Six Feet Under,” “Melrose Place,” “The Golden Girls,” “Days of Our Lives” and “Murder One.” … Read full obituary

A senior al-Qaida operative involved in the 2005 London subway and bus bombings and a 2006 plot to blow up commercial airliners over the Atlantic Ocean has died in Pakistan’s tribal region, U.S. counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

The militant, an Egyptian who used the nom de guerre Abu Ubaida al-Masri, succumbed to hepatitis, they said. … Read full story

DJ who helped to open the closet door of the 1960s and led London’s gay club scene for more than 40 years …

Martyn Allam, known as DJ Tallulah, was born on October 2, 1948. He died after a heart attack on March 25, 2008, aged 59 … Read full obituary

Annemarie Renger was the first woman to become president (Speaker) of the Bundestag (lower house of the German parliament). …

When her party, the Social Democrats, lost its tenuous majority again in the Bundestag and the speakership reverted to the Christian Democrats in 1976, Renger remained a deputy Speaker until she gave up her seat in 1990 at the age of 70. …

Annemarie Renger, parliamentarian and Speaker of the Bundestag, was born on October 7, 1919. She died on March 3, 2008, aged 88 … Read full obituary

British jazz drummer, composer and band leader who was always in demand to accompany the great musicians of Britain and the US …

Allan Ganley, jazz drummer, composer and bandleader, was born on March 11, 1931. He died of complications after heart surgery on March 29, 2008, aged 77 … Read full obituary

Former Hawke Government Minister John Button has died at the age of 74.

Mr Button served as a Victorian Senator between 1974 and 1993, and was a Senior Minister in the former Hawke Labor Government.

Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard today confirmed his death, saying that he was an honest and frank man. … Read full obituary

Forty years ago next month, Tom Lewis and eight other Vietnam War protesters strode into the offices of U.S. Selective Service Board 33 in Catonsville and left a mark on history.

The “Catonsville Nine” emptied file cabinets, hauled 600 draft records into the parking lot and burned them with homemade napalm. Then they prayed and waited to be arrested.

That act of civil disobedience on May 17, 1968, inspired headlines — and more than 200 protests at draft board offices across the country. … Read full obituary

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Peace activist Philip Berrigan, 79

TOKYO - Kaku Yamanaka, Japan’s oldest person, has died of old age in central Japan, officials said Saturday. She was 113. …

Born on Dec. 11, 1894, Yamanaka became Japan’s oldest person when Tsuneyo Toyonaga, 113, died in February. …

Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Indiana, is recognized as the world’s oldest person at age 114, according to Guinness World Records. … Read full obituary

AP — 49 minutes ago — Charlton Heston, who appeared in some 100 films in his 60-year acting career but who is remembered chiefly for his monumental, jut-jawed portrayals of Moses, Ben-Hur and Michelangelo, died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 83. … Yahoo! News full coverage, with links to various obituaries.

Comic-strip publisher who championed Hergé and made Tintin a household name worldwide … Read full obituary

NEW YORK (AP) — Wayne Frost, a hip-hop pioneer known as “Frosty Freeze” whose acrobatic performance with the legendary Rock Steady Crew in the 1983 hit movie “Flashdance” set off a worldwide breakdancing craze, has died. He was 44.

Frost died Thursday after a long illness, said Jorge “Fabel” Pabon, a senior vice president of the crew where Frost and other so-called b-boys (for beat or break boys) made their name performing complicated and daring dance routines. … Read full obituary

The last Turkish veteran of the First World War who also fought for the independence of Turkey

The last Turkish veteran of the First World War, Yakup Satar, who has died at the age of 110, fought at the Second Battle of Kut in the Mesopotamian campaign. He was captured there by the British in February 1917, as Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Maude’s British and Indian army drove the Ottoman Empire’s forces back up the Tigris from Basra towards Baghdad. … Read full obituary

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Former Rep. Bill Dickinson, a Democrat-turned-Republican who championed a strong defense and helped make Alabama a two-party state, has died. He was 82. …

Dickinson, a former judge in city, juvenile and circuit courts in Opelika, was one of several Democrats recruited to change parties in 1964 and run as Republicans for Congress in a state that had been solidly Democratic for a century. … Read full obituary

MOSCOW (AP) — Joseph Stalin’s oil and gas minister Nikolai Baibakov has died at the age of 97. …

In a 1998 interview Baibakov recalled being commissioned to destroy oil wells in the Caucasus region during World War II to prevent the German army from seizing them. But he said Stalin threatened to shoot him if he destroyed the wells. … Read full obituary