Dead Celebrity Alert

JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Former President Suharto, an army general who rose to power in Indonesia with the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people and ruled for 32 years over an era of rapid economic growth and extraordinary graft, died Sunday in Indonesia. He was 86.

Like many Javanese, Suharto went by only one name. He had been in poor health for years after suffering several strokes and other ailments. He was rushed to the hospital Jan. 4 with anemia, low blood pressure and other ailments.

Suharto’s unyielding opposition to communism won him the backing of the United States during the height of the Cold War, although he was one of the most brutal and corrupt rulers of that era. He governed the world’s fourth-most-populous nation with a combination of paternalism and ruthlessness from 1965 until he was ousted in the spring of 1998. …

The estimates of the number of people killed by Suharto’s regime “vary from 300,000 to 2 million, but the exact number nobody knows,” said Asmara Nababan, former secretary general of Indonesia’s Human Rights Commission. …

His military regime incarcerated hundreds of thousands of political prisoners for years without trial. Many critics of his rule simply vanished. … Read full obituary

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan

Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, aides said.

The death of the 54-year-old charismatic former prime minister threw the campaign for the Jan. 8 parliamentary elections into chaos and created fears of mass protests and violence across the nuclear-armed nation, an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.

The attacker struck just minutes after Bhutto addressed thousands of supporters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, 8 miles south of Islamabad. She was shot in the neck and chest by the attacker, who then blew himself up, said Rehman Malik, Bhutto’s security adviser.

At least 20 others were killed in the attack. …

Bhutto’s supporters at the hospital exploded in anger, smashing the glass door at the main entrance of the emergency unit. …

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. But some of Bhutto’s supporters at the hospital began chanting, “Killer, Killer, Musharraf,” referring to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Bhutto’s main political opponent. A few began stoning cars outside. … Read full story

U.S. Rep. Julia Carson died at home this morning following a battle with lung cancer. She was 69.

Carson’s death comes just weeks after she announced the cancer, which she had beaten before, was back with “terminal vengeance.” …

Gov. Mitch Daniels’ office said tentative plans were under way to have Carson’s body lie in state at the Rotunda in the Indiana State House. Daniels ordered that flags be lowered today until sunset on the day of her burial. Calling was tentatively scheduled for Friday, with the funeral service on Saturday. … Read full obituary

A former Republican Congressman who led the attempt to impeach former US President Bill Clinton has died in hospital in his home state of Illinois. …

Mr Hyde led Republican efforts to impeach Mr Clinton over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky from his position as chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives.

But he appeared reluctant to pursue the case as vigorously as some in his own party.

His own reputation was damaged when it emerged during the scandal that he had had an affair with a married woman in his early 40s. … Read full obituary

Related:
Henry Hyde at Conservative Babylon

Effi Barry, 63, a regal first lady of Washington who endured her husband’s very public sex and drug scandal during his tenure as mayor, died early this morning of leukemia at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis.

Ms. Barry, who most recently worked as an employee in the city health department, was married to former mayor Marion Barry for 12 years. They divorced in 1990, not long after he was captured on videotape smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room with an ex-model and begging her to have sex with him.

She left Washington after the divorce and taught health and sex education at Hampton University, her alma mater, before returning to Washington and supporting her former husband in his successful bid for the Ward 8 D.C. Council seat in 2004. … Read full obituary

Former Rep. Jennifer Dunn, who became the most powerful Republican woman in Washington state history during six terms representing Seattle’s east-side suburbs, died Wednesday after developing a blood clot in her Virginia apartment, said a statement from her family. She was 66.

Dunn, a favorite of both Bush White Houses, was Washington state’s ranking Republican in Congress when she retired in 2004. …

Dunn was known for her work on tax issues, promoting women-owned businesses and sponsoring the Amber Alert bill for locating missing children. … Read full obituary

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — Representative Paul E. Gillmor, an Ohio Republican who represented much of the northwestern and north-central part of the state, was found dead in his apartment on Wednesday.

Mr. Gillmor, 68, was discovered by staff members who went to the apartment in Arlington, Va., after the congressman did not show up at his office, a Republican leadership aide told The Associated Press. Brad Mascho, a spokesman for the lawmaker, said the death appeared to be of natural causes, Bloomberg News reported. Mr. Mascho said Mr. Gillmor had been active recently, having traveled to all 16 counties in his district last week. … Read full obituary

Former Hamer government minister Walter Jona, credited with saving thousands of lives by ushering in compulsory seatbelt laws in Victoria, has died after a long fight with cancer.

Mr Jona held the Melbourne seat of Hawthorn for the Liberal Party for 21 years and was behind the 1971 laws that made seatbelts mandatory.

The 81-year-old held the seat of Hawthorn, now held by Liberal Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu, from 1964 until 1985. He served as Minister of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs from 1976 until 1979 and was later minister for community services. … Read full obituary

Kurt Waldheim, 88, a seemingly colorless diplomat who became secretary general of the United Nations and president of his native Austria only to be barred from the United States for suspected involvement in Nazi war crimes, died today at a Vienna hospital. He had been treated for an infection since last month.

When Waldheim was put on the Justice Department’s “watch list” of prohibited persons in 1987, it was the first time in U.S. history that the head of a friendly country had been branded an undesirable alien suspected of war crimes with the German army in World War II.

He would remain on the “watch list” for the rest of his life — which made him an international pariah despite his denials of Nazi sympathies and the high positions he had held in Austria and at the United Nations. For most of his six years in the largely ceremonial Austrian presidency, Waldheim was a virtual prisoner within his country, shunned by all but a handful of other countries.

The facts about what Waldheim did during the war years were never clearly established, and there was no clear-cut proof that he participated personally in murder or other war crimes. But there was strong evidence that he had concealed his role as a lieutenant between 1942 and 1945 with Nazi Army units involved in atrocities against Yugoslav partisans and had lied about his whereabouts during that period. … Read full obituary

Samuel A. Garrison III, a congressional lawyer who argued against the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon, has died in Virginia at age 65.

Garrison, the chief Republican counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigation in 1974, died of leukemia May 27, The New York Times reported.

He was chosen to replace the former counsel, Albert Jenner, who had recommended Nixon’s impeachment. …

Before working for the House of Representatives, Garrison was a state prosecutor and a liaison to Congress for Vice President Spiro Agnew. …

Garrison later announced he was gay and became active in gay rights issues, the Times reported. … Read full obituary

ZAGREB, April 29, 2007 — Former Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan died in a Zagreb clinic early today as a result of kidney cancer. He was 63.

Racan, who recently stepped down as the leader of the Social Democrats, led a governing coalition between 2000 and 2003. … Read full obituary

Former President Boris Yeltsin died of heart failure in a Kremlin hospital on Monday. He was 76.

The Kremlin’s top doctor, Sergei Mironov, said Yeltsin died at 3:45 p.m. at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow. “He died as a result of progressive cardiovascular and multiple organ failures,” Mironov told reporters. …

It was not immediately clear what led to the heart failure. Less than two weeks ago, Yeltsin was planning a seaside vacation, said Viktor Chernomyrdin, who served for eight years as Yeltsin’s prime minister. …

Sergei Stepashin, who served as Yeltsin’s prime minister for just a few months, called Yeltsin “an entire epoch in the history of our country.”

“He was a complex man, but he assumed great responsibility for the fate of Russia,” said Stepashin, Interfax reported. Stepashin, now head of the Audit Chamber, was very loyal as prime minister and was visibly shaken when Yeltsin fired him in August 1999 to promote Putin to the post.

Yeltsin resigned four months later, leaving little time for the opposition to mount a meaningful challenge to Putin, his heir apparent. … Read full obituary

Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif., died early Sunday of cancer, an aide said.

Millender-McDonald, who was 68, died at her home in Carson, Calif., said her chief of staff, Bandele McQueen.

McQueen could provide no details on what form of cancer Millender-McDonald had. …

She was in her seventh term representing a Southern California district that includes Compton, Long Beach and parts of Los Angeles. … Read full obituary

Jim Jontz, whose environmental activism sparked a political career that led him to three terms in Congress, has died, his stepfather said.

Jontz died Saturday afternoon at his home in Portland, Ore., said his stepfather, Paul A. Lennon of Indianapolis. He was 55. …

He was diagnosed two years ago with advanced colon cancer that had spread to his liver and had been at home under hospice care this month, said his sister, Mary Lee Turk.

Jontz, a Democrat, was 35 when he was elected in 1986 to his first of three terms in Congress. A liberal who took on environmental causes such as protecting the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth forests, he represented a largely rural swath of northern Indiana from southern Lake County through the Kokomo and Marion areas until he lost to Republican Steve Buyer in 1992.

Jontz then led an anti-NAFTA coalition of labor unions, environmentalists and others as Congress debated the free-trade treaty in 1993. … Read full obituary

Port Jervis — A small city mayor who pulled off one of the biggest political upsets of the 1980s is dead. E. Arthur Gray died last night at age 82.

Gray served five and a half terms as mayor of Port Jervis, his lifelong home town. He was the city’s longest-serving mayor.

In 1988, the Democrat challenged eight-term Republican state senator Richard Schermerhorn, and won. … Read full obituary