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LONDON — Alfred Brendel, a pianist and poet renowned for his refined playing of Beethoven over a six-decade career, died Tuesday at his home in London. He was 94.

Brendel’s death was announced by the public relations agency Bolton & Quinn.

Born in what is now the Czech Republic, Brendel gave his first recital in Graz, Austria, in 1948 at age 17. His final concert was with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein on Dec. 18, 2008.

“I grew up in a family that was not musically inclined, not artistically inclined and not intellectual, so I had to find out a lot of things for myself,” he said in a 2012 interview for the Verbier Festival. “I was a young person who, in the early 20s, did not think I have to achieve something within five years, but I thought I would like to be able to do certain things when I’m 50. And when I was 50 I said to myself, ‘I have actually done most of the things I want to do.’ ”

Brendel also was praised for his interpretations of Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Haydn. He recorded the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas three times, and he played them over a month at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1983, among 77 recitals in 11 cities during the 1982-83 season. He repeated the sonatas again at Carnegie over three seasons in the 1990s.

“With winks to the audience and demonstrative hand movements, he has a playful manner that offsets his serious, contemplative interpretations,” the Associated Press wrote during the 1990s cycle.

Born on Jan. 5, 1931, in Wiesenberg, northern Moravia, Brendel studied piano in Zagreb, Yugoslavia with Sofia Dezelic and then at the Graz Conservatory with Ludovika von Kaan. He also took composition lessons with Artur Michl. His studies were interrupted when he and his mother fled as the Russian army invaded during World War II.

“When I turned 16, my piano teacher told me I should now continue on my own and give a first public recital,” he recalled during a lecture after his retirement. “I should also audition for the great Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer, which I did the following year. Three of his masterclasses that I attended during the Lucerne festivals made an impact that lasts to this day. I also met Eduard Steuermann, the pupil of Busoni and Schoenberg. Apart from these encounters, I studied on my own.”

Brendel had lived in London since 1971. He received 10 Grammy nominations without winning. He wrote several books, including a collection of poems called “Cursing Bagels.”

“I used to live a double life,” he said in a 2012 interview with the Verbier Festival. “I’m also a literary person lecturing, giving readings of my poems and teaching.”

Brian Wilson, the musical savant who scripted a defining Southern California soundtrack with the Beach Boys before being pulled down by despair and depression in full public view, has died. He was 82.

Wilson’s family announced his death Wednesday morning on Facebook. “We are at a loss for words right now,” the post said.

“Please respect our privacy at this time as our family is grieving. We realize we are sharing our grief with the world,” said the statement, which was also shared on Instagram and the musician’s website.

The statement didn’t reveal a cause of death. Wilson died more than a year after it was revealed he was diagnosed with dementia and placed under a conservatorship in May 2024. For decades, Wilson battled mental health issues and drug addiction.

“The world mourns a genius today, and we grieve for the loss of our cousin, our friend, and our partner in a great musical adventure,” the Beach Boys said in a statement on Wednesday. “Brian Wilson wasn’t just the heart of The Beach Boys — he was the soul of our sound. The melodies he dreamed up and the emotions he poured into every note changed the course of music forever. “

The group added: “Together, we gave the world the American dream of optimism, joy, and a sense of freedom — music that made people feel good, made them believe in summer and endless possibilities. We are heartbroken by his passing.”

Elton John, the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, Mick Fleetwood and Nancy Sinatra were among the artists who remembered Wilson on social media. Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge and California Gov. Gavin Newsom also paid tribute to Wilson and his contributions to music.

“Wilson fundamentally changed modern music, helping make the Beach Boys not only the defining American band of their era, but also the California band to this day,” Newsom said in a statement. “He captured the mystique and magic of California, carrying it around the world and across generations.”

Roundly regarded as a genius in the music studio, Wilson wrote more than three dozen Top 40 hits, bright summertime singalongs that were radio candy in the early 1960s, anthems to the surf, sun and souped-up cars.

In an era when rock groups were typically force-fed material written by established musicians and seasoned songwriters, Wilson broke the mold by writing, arranging and producing a stream of hits that seemed to flow effortlessly from the studio.

Riding the crest of peppy, radio-friendly songs like “Surfer Girl,” “California Girls” and “Don’t Worry Baby,” Capital Records gave Wilson almost unchecked control over the group’s output. The label came to hold Wilson in such high regard that it even allowed him to record where he wished rather than use the cavernous Capitol studios in Hollywood that the Beach Boy leader felt were suitable only for orchestras.

“There are points where he did 37 takes of the same song,” said William McKeen, who taught a rock ‘n’ roll history course at the University of Florida. “One track will be someone singing ‘doo, doo, doo’ and the next will be ‘da, da, da.’ Then you hear them all together and, my God, it’s a complex piece of music.

“And he heard it all along.”

In many ways, the studio became Wilson’s primary instrument, just as it had been Phil Spector’s. As his confidence grew, Wilson’s compositions became more majestic and complex as he pieced together a far-reaching catalog of music while his bandmates toured the world without him — just as he preferred.

When the group returned from a tour in Asia in 1966, they discovered that Wilson had created an entire album during their absence. He had written the songs — many with guest lyricist Tony Asher, used the highly regarded Wrecking Crew session musicians to record with him and regarded the product as essentially a solo album. All his bandmates needed to do, he explained, was add their voices.

Brian Wilson, second to right, performs with the Beach Boys in California circa 1964.

(Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

The songs on “Pet Sounds” were achingly beautiful and introspective. Some were melancholy, wistful, and brimming with nostalgia. Gone were the waves, the sunshine and the blond-haired girls that populated his earlier work. They were replaced with interlocking songs that seemed to form a single piece of music.

His bandmates were dumbstruck. Mike Love, his cousin and lead singer of the group, told him the album would have been better had he had a bigger hand in its creation. “Stop f— with the formula,” he reportedly snapped. Other band members agreed that the songs seemed foreign compared with surefire crowd pleasers like “Surfin’ U.S.A” and “Dance, Dance, Dance.” But they relented, and the album was released.

Love, in a lengthy 2012 L.A. Times op-ed about his brittle relationship with Wilson, told the story far differently, however. He said he was an early champion of the album, wrote some of the songs, came up with the title and helped convince Capitol to get behind the record when the label dragged its feet.

Though “Pet Sounds” was the first Beach Boys recording not to go gold — at least not immediately — it was a virtual narcotic to critics and admirers. Paul McCartney said it was “the classic of the century” and, as the story goes, rallied the rest of the Beatles to record “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in response. Classical composer Leonard Bernstein declared Wilson a genius and one of America’s “most important musicians.”

As the years passed, the album became a treasured gem, saluted as one of the finest of the rock era and preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. Fifty years after it was released, it was still ranked as the second-best album of all time by both Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, topped only by “Sgt. Pepper’s.”

“Part of Brian Wilson’s genius was his ability to express great complexity within the frame of great simplicity,” wrote Anthony DeCurtis, an author and former Rolling Stone editor.

Then things fell apart.

For months, Wilson tinkered in the studio on an album with the working title “Smile” as anticipation built for what it might be and in what direction it might take rock, already shifting quickly in the dawn of the psychedelic era — music, drugs, lifestyle and all. Wilson said the album would be a “teenage symphony to God,” a piece of music so audacious it would unlock the straitjacket he felt was keeping pop music bland and predictable.

The first window into the album was “Good Vibrations,” a 3-minute, 35-second song that featured dramatic shifts in tone and mood with Wilson’s distinctive falsetto soaring above it all. It was an immediate commercial and critical success.

But it was also a disturbing sign of the madcap world Wilson now inhabited. Recordings for “Good Vibrations” stretched over seven months, the sonic blips and beeps he was trying to stitch together consumed 90 hours of tape and costs soared to nearly $75,000 — roughly $740,000 in 2025 valuation. All the while, musicians — some bandmates, others hired guns — filed in and out of four different studios as he searched for perfection.

Not everyone thought it was worth the effort for a single song.

“You had to play it about 90 bloody times to even hear what they were singing about,” complained Pete Townshend, the guitarist and songwriter for the Who. Spector — Wilson’s idol — said it felt “overproduced.” McCartney said it lacked the magic of “Pet Sounds.”

Wilson felt otherwise. When he finished the final mix on “Good Vibrations,” he said it left him with a feeling he’d never experienced.

“It was a feeling of exaltation. Artistic beauty. It was everything.”

The band toured again as Wilson continued work on “Smile,” an increasingly troubled project. He ordered members of a studio orchestra to wear fire gear and reportedly built a fire in the studio during a recording of “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” which was to be the album’s opening number. He turned to veteran recording artist Van Dyke Parks for help with the lyrics rather than wait for his bandmates to return.

When Love listened to the still-under-construction album, he dismissed it as “a whole album of Brian’s madness,” according to the Guardian. Parks, an admired lyricist with his own career to worry about, eventually walked away from the project, spooked by Wilson’s erratic behavior and what he saw as Love’s uncomfortable tendency to bully his cousin.

David Marks, from left, Al Jardine, Brian Wilson, Blondie Chaplin, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston at the 2024 world premiere of the Disney+ documentary “The Beach Boys” in Hollywood.

(Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images)

Whether it was the hostile reaction from his bandmates or the hopelessness of navigating the maze of half-finished songs and sonic fragments he’d created, Wilson put the whole thing aside. It would be decades before he revisited it.

“When we didn’t finish the album, a part of me was unfinished also, you know?” Wilson wrote in his 2016 memoir “I am Brian Wilson.” “Can you imagine leaving your masterpiece locked up in a drawer for almost 40 years?”

Love, who sued Wilson repeatedly through the years to get songwriting credit for dozens of songs he claimed he helped write, bristled at the suggestion that he had upended his cousin’s masterwork.

“What did I do? Why am I the villain?” Love wondered aloud in a lengthy 2016 profile in Rolling Stone. “How did it get to this?

Wilson’s psyche had been fragile for years. He was reclusive at times, spending days alone in a bedroom at his Malibu mansion, where he had a baby grand piano installed in a sandbox and a teepee erected in the living room. He admitted that he suffered from auditory hallucinations, which caused him to hear voices.

And he took drugs by the bucketful.

He was public about his demons. He was mentally ill, he said, consumed with such depression that he couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time. He smoked pot, experimented with LSD and got through the day with a steady lineup of amphetamines, cocaine and sometimes heroin. A tall man, Wilson’s weight ballooned to more than 300 pounds, and when he did surface in public, he seemed withdrawn and distracted.

“I lost interest in writing songs,” he told The Times in a 1988 interview. “I lost the inspiration. I was too concerned with getting drugs to write songs.”

It all started in Hawthorne, where Wilson was born on June 20, 1942. The eldest of three boys, he grew up in suburban comfort not far from the beaches that would inspire so many of his early songs.

His father, Murry, was a musician and a machinist; his mother, Audree, a homemaker. Wilson went to Hawthorne High, where he played football and baseball. He earned an F for a composition he submitted in his music class, though decades later the school changed his grade to an A when administrators discovered the composition had become the Beach Boys’ first hit song, “Surfing.” School officials invited him to campus to accept their apology.

At home, he played the piano obsessively. He recalled hearing George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” when he was 4, lying on the floor of his grandmother’s house, mesmerized that the composer had captured both a city and an entire era in a single piece of music. He took accordion lessons but set the instrument aside after six weeks. His father, though, noticed his son had the ability to quickly repeat melodies on the piano.

“He was very clever and quick. I just fell in love with him,” Murry Wilson says in Peter Carlin’s “Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.”

In 1961, with his parents on vacation, Wilson, his brothers, Love and their friend Al Jardine rented guitars, a bass, drums and an amplifier with the food money their parents had left behind and staged a concert for their friends. When Murry Wilson returned home, he was more pleased than angered and encouraged the fledgling musicians to continue. Armed with a handful of songs, the Pendletones — named for the then-popular flannel shirts — began to play at school dances and parties. When they went into the studio to record, a producer changed the group’s name to the Beach Boys and never bothered to tell them.

If it all sounded sunny and carefree, Wilson didn’t remember it that way. He said his father was abusive and seemed to delight in humiliating him, typically in public. It was possible, he said, that his hearing problems stemmed from one of the times his father smacked him in the head.

“I was constantly afraid,” he told The Times in 2002. “That’s what I remember most: being nervous and afraid.”

When the Beach Boys became successful, Murry took over as their manager and increasingly took charge of their business affairs. When money was needed, he overrode his sons’ objections and sold off the band’s publishing company, believing the group had peaked. When the group went on the road, he went with them and fined his sons if they broke his rules — no booze, no profanity, no fraternizing with women. Finally, in 1964, Wilson and his brothers essentially fired their father. Never fully reconciled with his sons, Murry died of a heart attack in 1973.

To some observers, the riddle of Brian Wilson could not be fully explained by the drugs he took, the voices he heard or the depression that smothered him like a blanket. It was more than that.

“My own theory is that he was never able, never quite allowed, to become an adult — and that this, more than anything else, has been the story of his life, and of his band,” wrote Andrew Romano in a lengthy 2012 Newsweek article.

An abusive father, a cousin he regarded as a bully and ultimately a psychologist who sought to control his every move, his every thought — all appeared to have a hand in making Wilson who he was.

And then there was Eugene Landy, a colorful character by any measurement. He wore orange sunglasses, drove a Maserati with a license plate reading “HEADDOC,” sported a Rod Stewart-style haircut and practiced a brand of pop psychology that was regarded by some as revolutionary. Others, though, saw Landy as a Svengali-like figure, a man who could make Wilson appear to be on the road to recovery while bleeding him of every resource he had.

Hired by Wilson’s first wife, Marilyn, in 1976, Landy had his first meeting with his new client in Wilson’s bedroom closet, the only place where the musician said he felt safe. Landy gradually won Wilson’s trust and, believing in 24-hour therapy, moved in with the musician.

The results were immediate. Wilson shed weight, quit taking street drugs and rejoined the Beach Boys on stage for the group’s 15th anniversary. For a man who was so paranoid that he reportedly refused to brush his teeth or shower for fear that blood would gush from the faucet, it was a night-and-day change.

But it was short-lived, and Landy was fired when the Beach Boys’ management balked at his fees, which hovered around $35,000 a month — around $345,000 in 2025 valuation.

Without Landy, Wilson quickly regressed — back on drugs, overeating, retreating to his bedroom. He separated from his wife and grew apart from his daughters, Carnie and Wendy. Then with a flourish, Landy returned and — armed with a full team of nutritionists, assistants and caregivers — doubled down on his around-the-clock therapy.

Landy concluded Wilson suffered from a schizoid personality with manic depressive features — introverted, painfully shy, unable to show emotion. Left untreated, Landy said, Wilson would inevitably swing freely between delusional highs and nearly suicidal lows. He loaded Wilson up on medications — lithium, Xanax, Halcion, among others.

So involved was Landy in Wilson’s every move that in 1988 when the musician released “Brian Wilson” — his first solo album and his best effort in years — Landy was listed as the executive producer and given co-writing credit on five of the 11 songs. Landy’s girlfriend was given co-writing credit on three other songs. Landy became Wilson’s manager, formed a business interest with the musician to share in any profits from recordings, films and books and tried to become executor of Wilson’s estate.

Landy was ousted for good when the state attorney general’s office opened an investigation into his relationship with Wilson, probing accusations that he had prescribed drugs without a medical license and had financially exploited his famous client.

Gary Usher, a songwriter who worked with Landy, told state investigators that Wilson was a virtual captive, manipulated by a man who frightened and intimidated him.

In 1989, Landy pleaded guilty to a single charge of unlawfully prescribing drugs, surrendered his license and moved to Hawaii, where he died of lung cancer in 2006.

Wilson, who rarely said anything negative about anyone, could find little kind to say about Landy in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone. “I thought he was my friend, but he was a very f— up man.”

Despite the tumult, Wilson kept recording and performing, sometimes showing glimpses of his former self, yet always doomed to comparisons with his earlier work.

In 2017, Times rock critic Randy Lewis observed that Wilson seemed chipper and content during a leg of the “Pet Sounds Live” tour at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. His voice, once shriveled by years of smoking and other abuses, was “assertive and confident,” Lewis wrote.

Two years later, though, Wilson postponed a leg of his “Greatest Hits” tour to focus on his mental health.

“It is no secret that I have been living with mental illness for many decades,” he wrote in a tender apology to ticketholders. “I’ve been struggling with stuff in my head and saying things I don’t mean, and I don’t know why.”

Through it all, the unfinished concept album he had put aside hung like a cloud.

A few snippets of the album had been used on “Smiley Smile,” a hurry-up recording in 1967 that the Beach Boys recorded to meet contractual demands, and “Surf’s Up,” a 1971 album built around a song of the same name that Wilson wrote for “Smile.”

Nearly 30 years later, an L.A. musician named Darian Sahanaja asked Wilson whether he’d be interested in revisiting “Smile.” The two had come to know each other on the road when Wilson sat in with Sahanaja’s group, the Wondermints.

The master tapes were unlocked, and Sahanaja said he downloaded the tracks and unconnected song fragments, aware that he was handling the very material that had nearly driven its author mad.

As the two worked on a laptop, the harmonies and unwritten connective tissue seemed to return to Wilson, Sahanaja said. They smoothed out transitions, changed tempos to help connect songs and phoned Parks when they were unable to make out lyrics. If he couldn’t remember a passage, Parks came up with substitute language.

In February 2004, Wilson’s version of “Smile” finally premiered at London’s Royal Festival Hall. With Wilson on stage, seated at a piano, and Parks in the audience, the crowd roared thunderously as a song cycle that had become nearly mythical in its absence was finally unveiled.

“I’m at peace with it,” Wilson said later, smiling.

Wilson is survived by six children, including daughters Carnie and Wendy, who made up two-thirds of the Grammy-nominated pop vocal group Wilson Philips. He is preceded in death by his wife, Melinda, who died in January 2024. His brother Dennis drowned in 1983 while diving in Marina Del Rey, and Carl, his other brother, died of lung cancer in 1998.

Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.

A “talented” young footballer has suddenly passed away aged just 19 leaving his family and friends shocked.

Pontypool footballer Tristan O’Keefe, aged 19, tragically passed away on Wednesday June 11.

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His sudden and untimely death left family, friends, supporters and his club reeling.

Tristan played over 100 games for Pontnewynnd AFC and played a a massive role in their promotion to the Gwent Premier League.

As a mark of respect the club is retiring Tristan’s number 3 jersey and plan to hang it in the changing rooms.

Tristan was described as “kind and humble” by those who knew him.

A statement from Pontnewynydd AFC reads: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that we share the devastating news of the passing of one of our own — Tristan O’Keefe.

“Tristan wasn’t just a talented footballer — he was a bright light in our club, a kind and humble young man who brought energy, joy, and strength to everyone around him.

“Loved by his teammates, respected by his coaches, and cherished by all at Pontnewynydd AFC, Tristan was an integral part of our unforgettable undefeated league campaign — a journey that led us to promotion to the Gwent Premier League.

“His presence was felt in every game, every training session, and every moment off the pitch.

“We will never forget you, Tristan. You will always be a part of Pontnewynydd AFC. Forever 19. Forever our Number 3.”

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David Greenwood adored basketball so much in middle school that he would play for three different teams in three different parks on the same day, multiple times a week.

His brother, Al, would be in the car driving around with him between games while David traded in his sweaty uniform for a fresh one, repeating the process over and over.

“He was relentless,” Al said, “because he loved the game.”

At home, David would get tossed around in driveway games by the cement contractor father who was twice his size, only to keep getting back up for more contact. In practices, he shot blindfolded to perfect his form, his brother having to let him know when he was close to going out of bounds so that he could get his bearings.

UCLA’s David Greenwood (34) shoots a basketball during a game against San Francisco at the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah, on March 15, 1979

(Peter Read Miller / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

Greenwood, the determined Compton kid who went from a star high school player at Verbum Dei to one of the top scorers in UCLA history to an NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons, died Sunday night at a Riverside hospital from cancer. He was 68.

True to the nature of someone who played through debilitating foot injuries throughout his career, Greenwood did not inform family of his illness until the end of his life.

“Everything happened so quickly,” said Bronson Greenwood, David’s nephew. “It was kind of a shock.”

One of the all-time great high school players in Southern California, Greenwood and teammate Roy Hamilton were among the final players recruited by legendary UCLA coach John Wooden. They were shocked when Wooden retired shortly after their senior season of high school and was replaced by Gene Bartow.

But they decided to stick with their commitments, lured in part by the pitch of a coach they would never play for in college.

“He told me if I went to USC or UNLV or Notre Dame, I’d be an All-American,” Greenwood once told The Times of Wooden’s proposal. “But if I went to UCLA, I’d be able to test myself against 12 other high school All-Americans every single day. … It was kind of like, ‘Come here and test your mettle.’ ”

Greenwood’s work ethic continued to push him as a Bruin. His practices with the team were followed by an hour in another gym, his brother feeding him passes. Along the way, he never shortchanged himself or teammates.

College athletes selected in the NBA draft pose with NBA commissioner Larry O’Brien, center, at New York’s Plaza Hotel on June 25, 1979. The players are, from left: Calvin Natt, Northeast Louisiana, drafted by New Jersey; Sidney Moncrief, Arkansas, drafted by Milwaukee; Bill Garthright, San Francisco, drafted by New York; O’Brien; Earvin Johnson, Michigan State, drafted by Los Angeles; Greg Kelser, Michigan State, drafted by Detroit; and David Greenwood, UCLA, drafted by Chicago.

(Associated Press)

“If he said he was going to shoot 100 free throws,” Al said, “it wasn’t 50, it wasn’t 65, it was 100 — and he didn’t stop until he got to 100.”

Having been dubbed “Batman and Robin” in high school, Greenwood and Hamilton remained close at UCLA, rooming together and biking to campus from where they lived in the Fairfax District. Hamilton remembered Greenwood as a remarkable rebounder who whipped outlet passes to him to get fast breaks started.

“We would always know how to motivate each other,” Hamilton said, “and connect with each other on the floor.”

Becoming a star by his sophomore season, Greenwood averaged a double-double in points and rebounds as a junior and a senior, finishing each season as an All-American. The 6-foot-9 forward’s go-to move was starting with his back about 10 to 12 feet from the basket before faking one way and unleashing a spin-around jumper.

One of his favorite memories as a Bruin, according to his brother, was a comeback against Washington State toward the end of his career in which the Bruins wiped out a late double-digit deficit, winning on Greenwood’s putback dunk only seconds before the buzzer.

The Bulls’ David Greenwood shoots over the Bullets’ Elvin Hayes during a game in 1981 at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland. Greenwood played for the Bulls from 1979-85.

(Focus On Sport / Getty Images)

UCLA never recaptured the Wooden glory during Greenwood’s four seasons, reaching the Final Four his freshman year and a regional final his senior year. But Greenwood remains No. 15 on the school’s all-time scoring list, having tallied 1,721 points.

After the Lakers selected Magic Johnson with the first pick of the 1979 NBA draft, the Chicago Bulls took Greenwood second as part of their massive rebuilding efforts. (Hamilton was also a lottery pick, going 10th to the Pistons.)

“He wasn’t exciting, he was steady,” Al Greenwood said of his brother. “You knew you were going to get a double-double every night out of him regardless of what the score was.”

Greenwood started every game in his first NBA season, averaging 16.3 points and 9.4 rebounds while making the all-rookie team. The Bulls went 30-52, their loss total more than triple the 17 losses that Greenwood’s teams had absorbed in four seasons as a Bruin.

But he persevered through the losing and a series of foot injuries caused by a running style in which his heels would hit the ground before his toes. Al remembered his brother coming back to Los Angeles to play the Lakers and taking his shoes off at home, saying it felt as if they were full of broken glass.

“That was how his feet felt a lot of the time, but he just played even when he shouldn’t have,” Al said. “I always called him The Thoroughbred.”

Former UCLA standout David Greenwood talks about his career during a National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame induction event on Nov. 21, 2021, in Kansas City, Mo.

(Colin E. Braley / Associated Press)

Greenwood would undergo one Achilles’ surgery on one foot and two on the other, never missing a full season in the process.

In October 1985, before the widespread use of cell phones, Greenwood learned he had been traded to San Antonio for future Hall of Famer George Gervin while listening to the radio. Late in his 12-year NBA career, he was a surprise playoff contributor for the Detroit Pistons when they won the 1990 NBA championship. Hamilton worked for CBS Sports as part of the production team broadcasting the Finals that year.

“Having my best friend in the world on the team and winning a title,” Hamilton said, “that was a joy for me.”

Greenwood went on to own several Blockbuster video stores and coached at his alma mater, guiding Verbum Dei to state championships in 1998 and 1999. His nephew recalled a soft side, his uncle picking him up and giving him a good tickle.

Greenwood is survived by his brother, Al; sister, Laverne; son, Jemil; and daughter, Tiffany, along with his former wife, Joyce. Services are pending.

LONDON — Frederick Forsyth, the British author of “The Day of the Jackal” and other bestselling thrillers, has died after a brief illness, his literary agent said. He was 86.

Jonathan Lloyd, his agent, said Forsyth died at home early Monday surrounded by his family.

“We mourn the passing of one of the world’s greatest thriller writers,” Lloyd said.

Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent. He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for “The Day of the Jackal,” his bestselling political thriller about a professional assassin.

Published in 1971, the book propelled him to global fame. It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a Peacock television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.

In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s.

Although Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and “it was hard to say no” to officials seeking information. “The zeitgeist was different,” he told the BBC. “The Cold War was very much on.”

He wrote more than 25 books including “The Afghan,” “The Kill List,” “The Dogs of War” and “The Fist of God” that have sold over 75 million copies, Lloyd said.

His publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr, said that “Revenge of Odessa,” a sequel to the 1974 book “The Odessa File” that Forsyth worked on with fellow thriller author Tony Kent, will be published in August.

“Still read by millions across the world, Freddie’s thrillers define the genre and are still the benchmark to which contemporary writers aspire,” Scott-Kerr said.

Sly Stone, a funk pioneer whose influence and impact as leader of the musical group Sly and the Family Stone was as enduring as his career was brief, has died. He was 82.

An agent of change before he vanished from the public eye, Stone died “after a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues,” according to a statement from his family, which didn’t specify when or where he died.

From his beginnings in a family gospel group and his time as a lively San Francisco DJ, Stone became one of the major innovators in R&B, rock and pop music. There was a keen curiosity, even a restlessness, in the way he kept changing his group’s sound during its short, spectacular stint at the top.

Stone had a capacity for summing up the zeitgeist of an America in social transition, from collective joy (“Dance to the Music”) to racial harmony (“Everyday People”), and from the search for transcendence (“I Want To Take You Higher”) to the broken idealism in which the 1960s ended (“Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”), a timeline in which he created a template for future generations of funk-rock hybrids.

After a musical peak that lasted six years, Stone released a few inconsequential records, spent decades mired in addictions to cocaine and sedatives, was arrested for possession of crack and lived in a camper van, a husk of his younger, vibrant self.

But several recent documentaries and Stone’s 2023 memoir “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” made a renewed case for the relevance of his bountiful vision, even amidst a tragic life.

“When Sly comes on stage, you see older people looking like, ‘What’s this?,’ and younger people losing their minds,” said Questlove, the director of “Summer of Soul” and “Sly Lives! (Aka The Burden Of Black Genius),” in an interview with the Times in 2021. “It’s an absolute lesson in how transformative they were.”

Stone formed Sly and the Family Stone in 1966, bringing in his brother Freddie (guitar) and sister Rose (piano). Stone played keyboards, guitar, bass and drums and wrote, arranged and produced all of the group’s music. The great funk bassist Bootsy Collins once called Stone “the most talented musician I know.”

Sly conceived of the Family Stone as a rainbow coalition of soul, with male and female, white and Black members. Traditional R&B was entering an expansive, transformative phase, which Stone accelerated with his innovations in funk, rock and psychedelia, not to mention fashion: He came to one interview, a reporter noted, in “knee-high fox fur boots, cut velvet knickers and a red satin shirt with 20-inch fringe on the sleeves.”

Between 1967 and 1973, Sly and the Family Stone had nine singles in the Top 40. “Dance to the Music,” the exuberant title song to their second album, hit No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. The hits that followed included three No. 1 songs — “Everyday People,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)” and “Family Affair” — as well as a No. 2, “Hot Fun in the Summertime.”

The mass of musicians he influenced ranges from Miles Davis to Janet Jackson, Herbie Hancock to Ice-T. “Everyday People” alone was covered by Aretha Franklin, Joan Jett, the Staples Singers, the Supremes and Pearl Jam, and it was interpolated by Arrested Development on the 1992 hit “People Everyday.” John Legend won a Grammy in 2007 for his cover of “Family Affair.” Prince, who was lavish in his praise of Stone, hired the Family Stone’s horn section to tour with him in 1997.

The group achieved perhaps their greatest renown in August 1969, when they landed a prestigious second-day gig at the Woodstock music festival, playing after Janis Joplin and before the Who.

Like many groups that weekend, they had equipment problems during the set, but resolved them with a bang-up 20-minute medley of “Everyday People” and “Dance to the Music.” “The delirium peaked during Sly & the Family Stone’s set,” journalist Ellen Sander wrote in the liner notes of the 2019 box set “Woodstock — Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive.”

In his occasional interviews, Stone made it clear that he was what, at the time, was called a race man. “Everybody in our group is neutral about race,” he told the New York Times in 1970. “Everybody in the group knows that Blacks have been screwed over by whites — that most whites are prejudiced.”

The band moved to L.A. not long after Woodstock, and quickly found trouble. The Black Panthers lobbied Stone to replace the two white band members with Black musicians. Some band members were doing cocaine and PCP. “It was havoc. It was very gangsterish, dangerous. The vibes were very dark at that point,” Family Stone saxophonist Jerry Martini told author Joel Selvin. Their concerts routinely started hours late, or never started at all.

When the group returned in 1971 with “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” (the title was a reply to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”), the exuberance of their music had curdled. The songs had a flinty exterior and a troubled tone. Stone wove drum machines into the dense thickets of sound. The cover showed a red, white and black American flag; “Africa Talks to You” was torpid — funk without any swing. The tone is bleak, dissonant, even static.

Years later, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” was recognized as a prophetic record, one of only a few that described the end of the 1960s’ idealism. It was the last significant music Stone released.

Sylvester Stewart was born March 15, 1944, in Denton, Texas. When he was 3 months old, his parents, K.C. and Alpha Stewart, moved the family to Vallejo, in the Bay Area. The family sang gospel music and were active in the Church of God in Christ, where K.C. was a deacon. “I thought everybody in the world played music,” Stone later said.

While still a youth, Stone cut his first record, a gospel 78 RPM disc with brother Freddie and sisters Rose and Vaetta, as the Stewart Four. A fifth-grade classmate misspelled Sylvester’s name on the school chalkboard, and the mistake turned into a prophetic nickname: Sly.

Before he reached puberty, Stone had mastered several musical instruments. In his teens, he recorded sporadically with various doo-wop and R&B groups. He studied music theory at Vallejo Junior College, then attended the Chris Borden School of Modern Broadcasting. In 1964, he got a job at the R&B station KSOL, where he brought the Beatles and Rolling Stones into the station’s playlist and showed off his slick patter. The station christened him Sly Sloan, but he hated the name, so he introduced himself to listeners as Sly Stone — a taste of stubbornness to come.

By 1966, after playing music in fits and starts, Stone had formed a new band by plucking the best musicians from his band, Sly and the Stoners, and his brother Freddie’s band, which included drummer Gregg Errico and saxophonist Jerry Martini. The brothers Stone enlisted bass guitar wonder Larry Graham, who’d been playing in a local jazz duo with his mother.

Their first album, “A Whole New Thing,” didn’t chart. Clive Davis, the president of CBS Records, who oversaw Epic, advised Stone to try for a more commercial sound. His first attempt was a bull’s-eye: “Dance to the Music,” a shared-vocal funk workout on which Graham begins to introduce his influential “thumping and plucking” style of bass, and trumpeter Cynthia Robinson warns, “All the squares, go home!”

The group’s third album, “Life,” was another dud, though it included top tracks “Life” and “M’Lady.” Soon after it disappeared, Stone recorded “Everyday People,” a jolly song about tolerance that featured an unusual one-note bassline by Graham, and popularized the phrase “different strokes for different folks.” In addition to “Everyday People,” 1969’s “Stand!” included the title track, “Sing a Simple Song,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” “You Can Make It If You Try.” and the playful but pointed six-minute track “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey,” which used a vocoder, delay and distortion to create a menacing artificiality that caught on quickly with Parliament-Funkadelic and was revived by T-Pain.

Stone described the band’s fifth album, 1971’s ominous “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” as “a very truthful album, made and then released at a very truthful moment in time. That’s what it was all about, because I know the truth always prevails. And that’s exactly what my music is all about.”

But there were other truths, particularly about drug addiction that Stone tried to keep hidden. Band members quit: first Errico, then Graham (who founded the funk act Graham Central Station), and later, Freddie Stone and Martini.

“Fresh,” in 1973, included the band’s final top-20 chart song, “If You Want Me to Stay.” Producer Brian Eno cited “Fresh” as the pivotal and irreversible production moment when “the rhythm instruments, particularly the bass drum and bass, suddenly become the important instruments in the mix.” `”Small Talk,” the following year, had a minor hit, “Time for Livin’,” and a cover photo of Sly, wife Kathy Silva (a Hawaiian actress whom he married onstage at Madison Square Garden) and their young son, Sylvester Jr.

The smiling family photo was deceptive, however. “He beat me, held me captive and wanted me to be in ménages à trois,” Silva later told People magazine. “I didn’t want that world of drugs and weirdness.” She left him in 1976 when his pit bull mauled Sylvester Jr., who was 2 at the time. Stone also had a daughter, Sylvette Phunne Robinson, with Family Stone trumpeter Robinson, and a second daughter, Novena Carmel, now a host for KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic” program.

Sly and the Family Stone’s next two albums, “High on You” and “Heard You Missed Me, Well I’m Back,” sold poorly. “Back on the Right Track,” in 1979, defied its hopeful title. There was another album in 1983. The adjective “reclusive” became permanently attached to his name.

Rumors persistently popped up, fostered by his absence: He’d recorded new songs, he’d worked with Prince, he had 100 new songs — no, 200 — he was on the verge of a comeback, always on the verge of it. He was convicted on charges of possessing cocaine in 1987. Two years later, he was arrested by FBI agents on a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution on the charges. He was arrested again for cocaine possession in 2011, after which he claimed he’d been to rehab seven times.

When Sly and the Family Stone were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, Stone stepped to the microphone, said, “See you soon,” and split. It was years before the public saw him again.

The Grammys paid tribute to Stone in 2006. After a medley of his hits, sung by John Legend, will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, among others, Stone came onstage in a white mohawk, sunglasses and a metallic duster, with a cast on his right hand. He hunched over a keyboard, sang a bit of “I Want to Take You Higher” in a distracted manner, seemed to miss a few cues and walked off before the song was over.

He was booked to play Coachella in 2010, shortly after he was reported to be homeless, but he played “an abysmal, confused set,” the Guardian said. Stone came on stage 3½ hours late, and when he talked, he either mumbled or stopped in the middle of sentences. He said he’d been kidnapped and cheated by managers. He started songs, held on for a few bars, then drifted away. “To say that he seemed high was an understatement,” a New Yorker writer observed. The L.A. Weekly called it a “sad spectacle.”

Rarely had a great music artist suffered such a severe, rapid and irreversible downfall. People struggled to explain it.

“He’s had problems because he hasn’t been able to grow up,” Sylvester Stewart Jr., his son, said in 1996, after Stone finished a 45-day stay in rehab. “He’s meant no harm to anyone.”

“Sly never grew out of drugs,” his ex-wife, Silva, said. “He lost his backbone and destroyed his future.”

Still, the story of his musical exuberance and deep personal pain continued to inspire – and haunt – the inheritors of his vision. With his pair of documentaries, director and musicians Questlove used Stone’s life story to probe weighty questions about Black genius and how it’s embraced, exploited and neglected by the culture. The power of Stone’s music is bound up in his private pain.

“Soul music is releasing a demon that turns into a beautiful, cathartic exercise,” Questlove told the Times in 2025. “We never just see it as ‘I’m watching someone go through therapy.’

“Only time will tell,” he said, “if I had to make the Sly story to save my own life.”

His 2023 memoir, largely a study of his early life and craft, alluded to the toll that his drug use took on his output. “I should have stopped sooner,” he wrote. “Much sooner: less dust and powder, fewer rocks and pipes, enough days given back that might have added up to years.”

In the last years of his life, Stone worked on sobriety and lived quietly in the San Fernando Valley. His family, including brother Freddie, were left to speak up for Sly.

“When people ask me questions about what was going on behind the scenes and how did you make such great music, I tell them it was Sly writing what was coming out of his heart and soul,” he told the website Wax Poetics. “He is a true genius.”

Approached by Britain’s MI6 while reporting on Nigeria’s Biafra War, he mined his experiences for literary inspiration.

Best-selling British novelist Frederick Forsyth, author of about 20 spy thrillers, has died at the age of 86.

Forsyth, who was a reporter and informant for Britain’s MI6 spy agency before turning his hand to writing blockbuster novels like The Day of the Jackal, died on Monday at his home in the village of Jordans in Buckinghamshire, said Jonathan Lloyd, his agent.

“We mourn the passing of one of the world’s greatest thriller writers,” Lloyd said of the author, who started writing novels to clear his debts in his early 30s, going on to sell more than 75 million books.

“There are several ways of making quick money, but in the general list, writing a novel rates well below robbing a bank,” he said in his 2015 autobiography, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue.

The gamble paid off after he penned The Day of the Jackal – his story of a fictional assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle by right-wing extremists – in just 35 days.

The novel met immediate success when it came out in 1971. It was later turned into a film and led to Venezuelan revolutionary Illich Ramirez Sanchez being nicknamed Carlos the Jackal.

Forsyth went on to write a string of bestsellers, including The Odessa File (1972) and The Dogs of War (1974). His 18th novel, The Fox, was published in 2018.

Forsyth trained as an air force pilot, but his linguistic talents – he spoke French, German, Spanish and Russian – led him to the Reuters news agency in 1961 with postings in Paris and East Berlin during the Cold War.

He left Reuters for the BBC but soon became disillusioned by its bureaucracy and what he saw as the corporation’s failure to cover Nigeria properly due to the government’s postcolonial views on Africa.

His autobiography revealed how he became a spy, the author recounting that he was approached by “Ronnie” from MI6 in 1968, who wanted “an asset deep inside the Biafran enclave” in Nigeria, where civil war had broken out the year before.

In 1973, Forsyth was asked to conduct a mission for MI6 in communist East Germany, driving his Triumph convertible to Dresden to receive a package from a Russian colonel in the toilets of the Albertinum museum.

The writer said he was never paid by MI6 but in return received help with his book research and submitted draft pages to ensure he was not divulging sensitive information.

In his later years, Forsyth turned his attention to politics, delivering withering, right-wing takes on the modern world in columns for the anti-European Union Daily Express.

Divorced from Carole Cunningham in 1988, he married Sandy Molloy in 1994. He lost a fortune in an investment scam in the 1980s and had to write more novels to support himself.

He had two sons, Stuart and Shane, with his first wife.

Legendary racehorse trainer Peter Easterby has died at the age of 95.

Easterby, based in Malton, North Yorkshire, saddled equine greats Sea Pigeon, Night Nurse and Little Owl to big-race victories.

He was champion jumps trainer three times, won the Champion Hurdle on five occasions and the Cheltenham Gold Cup twice.

The figurehead of a renowned racing family, he was the first British trainer to have more than 1,000 winners on both the flat and over the jumps.

Easterby, whose brother Mick is also a successful trainer, retired in 1996 when he handed his training licence to son Tim.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of my father Peter Easterby,” said Tim.

“He passed away peacefully in his own home with his family by his side. A true gentleman, legendary racehorse trainer, passionate farmer, lover of country sports and an incredibly proud father and grandfather.”

While Sea Pigeon won both the Champion Hurdle and Chester Cup twice, Easterby said the biggest cheer he heard was was when the horse won the Ebor Handicap on the flat at York in 1979.

“The announcer got ‘Sea’ out and you couldn’t hear the other word ‘Pigeon” because there was such a roar, so that was very exciting,” he recalled.

Night Nurse was another two-time champion hurdler, who was narrowly denied a Cheltenham Gold Cup triumph in 1981, by stablemate Little Owl.

Easterby had also won the Gold Cup two years earlier with Alverton, who was then sent off favourite for the Grand National but died after a fall at Becher’s Brook.

He held a training licence for 46 years and won his first Champion Hurdle with Saucy Kit in 1967.

Uriah Rennie, the Premier League’s first black referee, has died aged 65.

Rennie officiated more than 300 games between 1997 and 2008, including 175 Premier League matches.

“We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our former chair and trailblazing referee, Uriah Rennie,” said a Sheffield & Hallamshire County Football Association statement., external

“Uriah made history as the Premier League’s first Black referee, officiating over 300 top-flight matches between 1997 and 2008. He broke down barriers, shaped our football community and inspired generations to come.”

Rennie recently revealed he was learning to walk again after a rare condition left him paralysed from the waist down.

Born in Jamaica, he moved to Sheffield as a child and grew up in the Wybourn area of the city.

He started refereeing in local football in 1979 before making history in 1997 when he oversaw a top-flight match between Derby County and Wimbledon.

“Incredibly sad news about the passing of Uriah Rennie. A Black pioneering referee and leader in the game,” said Leon Mann, co-founder of the Football Black List.

“We owe so much to those who push open the doors. Uriah should never, ever be forgotten.

“Thoughts and prayers with Uriah’s family and close friends.”

Former Nottingham Forest, Liverpool and Aston Villa striker Stan Collymore said he was “incredibly sad” to hear of Rennie’s death, adding he was a “pioneer” and a “trailblazer”.

Rennie had been a magistrate in Sheffield since 1996 and campaigned on issues including improving equality and inclusion in sport, mental health and tackling deprivation.

He had a master’s degree in business administration and law and, in November 2023, was awarded an honorary doctorate by Sheffield Hallam University for his distinguished contributions to sport and his work with South Yorkshire communities.

In May, Rennie was installed as the new chancellor of the university.

A murder investigation has been launched after a teenage boy died in north Manchester.

Officers were called to Nevin Road in the New Moston area at about 17:00 BST, Greater Manchester Police said.

The force has not yet said how the boy died. Three people have been arrested in connection with the incident.

Supt Marcus Noden said it was “distressing and heartbreaking” that a boy had lost his life and urged witnesses to come forward.

The force said it was “still trying to establish the circumstances” around the incident and several areas had been cordoned off, including outside the Fairway Inn Pub on Nuthurst Rd.

The boy’s family is being supported by specialist officers.

Supt Noden appealed for anyone with information to come forward.

He said they wanted to hear from “anyone who was in the Nevin Road area” who saw the incident take place.

“We will bring updates as we get them as the investigation continues,” he added.

When Michele Kaemmerer showed up at firehouses in the 1990s, she sometimes encountered firefighters who didn’t want to work with her and would ask to go home sick.

Los Angeles fire officials supported Kaemmerer, the city’s first transgender fire captain, by denying the requests.

If the slights hurt her, she didn’t let it show.

“She really let things roll off her back pretty well. Some of the stuff was really hurtful, but she always had a good attitude,” said Janis Walworth, Kaemmerer’s widow. “She never took that out on anybody else. She was never bitter or angry.”

Kaemmerer, an early leader for transgender and women’s rights at a department not known for its warm welcome to women and minorities, died May 21 at age 80 of heart disease at her home in Bellingham, Wash. She is survived by Walworth and two children.

Michele Kaemmerer wears a shirt to show pride in her trans and lesbian identity in an undated photo.

(Courtesy of Janis Walworth)

A Buddhist, a Democrat, a feminist and a lesbian transgender woman, Kaemmerer busted stereotypes of what a firefighter was. She joined the LAFD in 1969 — long before she transitioned in 1991 — and became a captain 10 years later.

“Being in a fire, inside of a building on fire, at a brush fire … it’s adrenaline-producing and it’s great,” Kaemmerer said in a 1999 episode of the PBS show “In The Life,” which documented issues facing the LGBTQ+ community. The episode featured Kaemmerer when she was captain of Engine 63 in Marina del Rey.

“The men and women here feel very stressed out having a gay and lesbian captain,” Savitri Carlson, a paramedic at the firehouse, said in the episode. “You have to realize, this is not just a job. We live, sleep, shower, eat together, change together.”

But Kaemmerer brushed off the snubs.

“They’re forced to live with a lesbian, yes,” she said, laughing as she prepared a meal at the firehouse. “And it doesn’t rub off.”

Those close to her said that Kaemmerer, who retired in 2003, was able to deal with the scrutiny and snide remarks because she was an optimist who saw the best in people.

“She really didn’t dwell on that stuff,” said Brenda Berkman, one of the first women in the New York City Fire Department, who met Kaemmerer in the 1990s through their work for Women in the Fire Service, now known as Women in Fire, which supports female firefighters across the world.

The suspicion sometimes came from other women. When Kaemmerer joined Women in the Fire Service, some members didn’t want her to go with them on a days-long bike trip.

Some argued that Kaemmerer was “not a real woman,” wondering what bathroom she would use and where she would sleep.

“She made clear she would have her own tent,” Berkman recalled. “I said to my group, ‘We can’t be discriminating against Michele — not after all we’ve fought for to be recognized and treated equally in the fire service. She has to be allowed to come.’”

Kaemmerer joined the trip.

Michele Kaemmerer fights a brush fire in an undated photo.

(Courtesy of Janis Walworth)

Born in 1945, Kaemmerer knew from an early age that she identified as a woman but hid it out of fear of being beaten or shamed. She cross-dressed secretly and followed a traditional life path, marrying her high school sweetheart (whom she later divorced), joining the Navy and having two children.

“I was very proud of her [when she came out],” said Kaemmerer’s daughter, who asked not to be identified for privacy reasons. “It takes incredible courage to do what she did, especially in a particularly macho, male-driven career.”

When she came out as transgender, Kaemmerer was captain of a small team at the LAFD, with three men working under her.

“It was very difficult for them,” she said in the PBS interview.

Kaemmerer focused on her work. During the 1992 L.A. riots, her fire truck was shot at as she responded to fires, Berkman said.

In the PBS interview, Kaemmerer said that some firefighters who knew her before she transitioned still refused to work with her.

Some women who shared a locker room with her worried that she might make a sexual advance. Most firefighters sleep in the same room, but Kaemmerer sometimes didn’t, so others would feel comfortable.

“Sometimes I will get my bedding and I will put it on the floor in the workout room or the weight room and sleep in there,” she said in the PBS interview.

As she was talking to PBS about her experience as a transgender woman in the fire department, the bell sounded.

“That’s an alarm coming in,” she said, standing up and walking out of the interview.

NEW YORK — Edmund White, the groundbreaking man of letters who documented and imagined the gay revolution through journalism, essays, plays and such novels as “A Boy’s Own Story” and “The Beautiful Room Is Empty,” has died. He was 85.

White’s death was confirmed Wednesday by his agent, Bill Clegg.

Along with Larry Kramer, Armistead Maupin and others, White was among a generation of gay writers who in the 1970s became bards for a community no longer afraid to declare its existence. He was present at the Stonewall raids of 1969, when arrests at a club in New York’s Greenwich Village led to the birth of the modern gay movement and for decades was a participant and observer through the tragedy of AIDS, the advance of gay rights and culture and the recent backlash.

A resident of New York and Paris for much of his adult life, he was a novelist, journalist, biographer, playwright, activist, teacher and memoirist. “A Boy’s Own Story” was a bestseller and classic coming-of-age novel that demonstrated gay literature’s commercial appeal. He wrote a prizewinning biography of playwright Jean Genet, along with books on Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University, where colleagues included Toni Morrison and his close friend, Joyce Carol Oates.

“Among gay writers of his generation, Edmund White has emerged as the most versatile man of letters,” cultural critic Morris Dickstein wrote in the New York Times in 1995. “A cosmopolitan writer with a deep sense of tradition, he has bridged the gap between gay subcultures and a broader literary audience.”

White was born in Cincinnati in 1940, but at age 7 moved with his mother to the Chicago area after his parents divorced. His father was a civil engineer and his mother was a psychologist. Feeling trapped and at times suicidal, White sought escape through the stories of others, including Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice” and a biography of dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

“As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excite me or assure me I wasn’t the only one, that might confirm my identity I was unhappily piecing together,” he wrote in the 1991 essay “Out of the Closet, on to the Bookshelf.”

As he wrote in “A Boy’s Own Story,” he knew as a child that he was attracted to boys but for years was convinced he must change — out of a desire to please his father (whom he otherwise despised) and a wish to be “normal.” Even as he secretly wrote a “coming out” novel while a teenager, he insisted on seeing a therapist and begged to be sent to boarding school. One of the funniest and saddest episodes from “A Boy’s Own Story” told of a brief crush he had on a teenage girl, ended by a polite and devastating note of rejection.

“For the next few months I grieved,” White writes. “I would stay up all night crying and playing records and writing sonnets to Helen. What was I crying for?”

Through much of the 1960s, he was writing novels that were rejected or never finished. Late at night, he would head out to bars. A favorite stop was the Stonewall, where he would down vodka tonics and try to find the nerve to ask a man he had a crush on to dance. He was in the neighborhood on the night of June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall and “all hell broke loose.”

“Up until that moment we had all thought homosexuality was a medical term,” wrote White, who soon joined the protests. “Suddenly we saw that we could be a minority group — with rights, a culture, an agenda.”

White’s debut novel, the surreal and suggestive “Forgetting Elena,” was published in 1973. He collaborated with Charles Silverstein on “The Joy of Gay Sex,” a follow-up to the bestselling “The Joy of Sex” that was updated after the emergence of AIDS. In 1978, his first openly gay novel, “Nocturnes for the King of Naples,” was released and he followed with the nonfiction “States of Desire,” his attempt to show “the varieties of gay experience and also to suggest the enormous range of gay life to straight and gay people — to show that gays aren’t just hairdressers, they’re also petroleum engineers and ranchers and short-order cooks.”

His other works included “Skinned Alive: Stories” and the novel “A Previous Life,” in which he turns himself into a fictional character and imagines himself long forgotten after his death. In 2009, he published “City Boy,” a memoir of New York in the 1960s and ’70s in which he told of his friendships and rivalries and gave the real names of fictional characters from his earlier novels. Other recent books included the novels “Jack Holmes & His Friend” and the memoir “Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris.”

“From an early age I had the idea that writing was truth-telling,” he told the Guardian around the time “Jack Holmes” was released. “It’s on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature — the holy book. There’s nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious and it should be totally transparent.”

Italie writes for the Associated Press.

Henry Salvatori, an Italian immigrant who became a confidant and major contributor to the nation’s most powerful and successful Republicans, including three U.S. presidents, has died. He was 96.

Salvatori, remembered as a key figure in Ronald Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet” of advisors, died Sunday at St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica.

A champion of conservative causes for decades, Salvatori used proceeds from the sale of his highly profitable oil company, Western Geophysical Corp., to become an important contributor and influence in the presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford.

The oil company Salvatori founded in 1933 now operates as Western Atlas, a division of Litton Industries. Despite his innovative seismic instrument that lent accuracy to prospecting for oil, Salvatori was more famous as a behind-the-scenes politician.

He became so well known as an eminence of the Republican conservative hierarchy that when Democrat Jesse Unruh launched his fall gubernatorial campaign against Reagan on Labor Day in 1970, he chose to do so in front of Salvatori’s Bel-Air home.

As Unruh told a host of reporters that Salvatori stood to get a $4,113 property tax break if a tax-shift bill proposed by the then-governor became law, Salvatori, fresh from his tennis court, yelled through the gate: “Oh, you ass, you.”

The next day, Reagan assailed Unruh for “harassing” Salvatori.

Salvatori was not one to accept such conduct quietly. He said later that he was pleased the tactic had apparently not done Unruh any political good, and he continued to complain that Unruh “had the gall to come into my driveway.”

Salvatori, unlike many other insider Republican advisors, seldom attempted to stay out of the limelight. He readily made himself accessible to reporters and others, and he never was apologetic or secretive about his views.

He was a conservative long associated with highly conservative candidates, buthe sometimes displayed a streak of independence. He once said that despite being an avid anti-Communist, he could accept a socialist government as long as it respected individual freedoms. And after directing then-Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty’s drive for reelection in 1969, he tried, in a speech at the maverick conservative Democrat’s inaugural, to hold out an olive branch to blacks who had been offended by the racial nature of Yorty’s campaign against challenger Tom Bradley.

A few years later, Salvatori temporarily broke with Reagan, supporting the more moderate incumbent, Ford, for the 1976 presidential nomination. Later, however, his ties with Reagan were restored and he was a supporter of Reagan in 1980 and 1984.

Salvatori was born in Rome on March 28, 1901. He came to the United States as a child and grew up in New Jersey, where his father was a wholesale grocer.

Educated at Pennsylvania and Columbia universities, he became an expert in the science of prospecting for oil by seismic methods. By the late 1950s, his company was the world’s largest offshore seismic contractor.

But it was as a political advisor, campaign director and big contributor that Salvatori became best known. San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto, in fact, once charged that Salvatori, not Reagan, was the real governor of California, through all the money he raised for Reagan and the influence he wielded.

Salvatori usually acted with a strong hand. As finance chairman of the Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964, he was accused in a book written later by the two men who handled the campaign’s public relations with almost strangling the effort by holding back on money for staff so that it could be saved for television advertising. Salvatori’s “most ineluctable fault,” said the book by Herbert M. Baus and William B. Ross, was that he “could not keep his hands off the nuts and bolts of the campaign.”

Characteristically, a year after the book appeared, when he was brought in as campaign director on an emergency basis to save Yorty from defeat by Bradley, the first step Salvatori took was to hire Ross as his chief assistant.

Salvatori and his late wife, Grace, gave a reported $90,000 to the Republican Party in 1968, and contributed $100,000 to Nixon’s reelection campaign in 1972.

Besides their political contributions, they gave major gifts to USC, Stanford University, Caltech, Pepperdine University, Claremont McKenna College, the University of Pennsylvania, Howard University and the Marlborough School in Los Angeles, among others. Schools are named after Salvatori at USC and Stanford. The Salvatoris also contributed greatly to hospitals, children’s clubs, civic groups and the arts.

Politically most active during the period in the 1960s and early ‘70s when anti-Vietnam War fervor and campus dissidence were at their height, Salvatori was unabashedly opposed to the protesters.

“These revolutionaries and critics of our society, lacking wisdom and understanding and beguiled by Communist-inspired ideology, focus on the unresolved problems of our nation and demand instant solutions,” he said at a Columbus Day observance at Los Angeles City Hall in 1970. “Deficient in perspective and realism and with little understanding of our inspiring history, they would destroy the highest civil order ever created by man–the United States of America.”

Salvatori always was proud of his role. “The Eastern press in particular always describes me by implication at least as if I’m secret, or sinister, perhaps, a mysterious guy in the background,” he once said. “This isn’t so.”

Instead, he was assertive, in private as well as public.

Probably the most famous example of Salvatori’s self-confidence and general assertiveness was his attempt, on Feb. 25, 1976, when he was 75, to personally fight off two young masked gunmen who invaded his home and carried off $450,000 in silverware and other loot.

At one point, he pulled a pistol on the pair but was quickly disarmed. He suffered a 2 1/2-inch cut on his right leg in a scuffle with the gunmen, who finally left him and his wife bound hand and foot in an upstairs bedroom. The injury later required an operation.

“There wouldn’t have been any violence if I didn’t react,” a calm and unruffled Salvatori told reporters a few hours later. He said the two burglars seemed surprised when he grabbed for his weapon in a night stand and quoted one of them as saying, “Can you imagine this guy pulling a gun on us?”

Police said Salvatori was lucky he was not shot. Much of what was stolen was later recovered, and the two burglars were convicted and sentenced to prison.

Survivors include a son, Henry Ford Salvatori; a daughter, Laurie Salvatori Champion, and a grandson. His wife of 54 years, Grace, died in 1990.

Funeral services will be private. Memorial donations may be made to St. John’s Hospital Foundation.

Former Yomiuri Giants player and manager Shigeo Nagashima, one of the biggest stars of Nippon Professional Baseball, died early Tuesday morning of pneumonia at a Tokyo hospital, his former team said in a statement. He was 89.

Nagashima played third base for the Giants from 1958 to 1974. Along with fellow superstar first baseman Sadaharu Oh, Nagashima led the team to 11 Japan Series titles, including nine straight from 1965 to 1973. He retired with a .305 batting average, 2,471 hits, 1,522 RBIs and 444 home runs.

He was one of Japan’s biggest celebrities, so much so that his 1965 marriage to Akiko Nishimura was nationally televised and was reportedly the country’s most-watched program of the year.

In 1975, Nagashima became the Giants’ manager but was fired in 1980 after not leading the team to a Japan Series title. He returned as manager from 1993 to 2001, however, and led the Giants to championships in 1994 and 2000, with future MLB outfielder Hideki Matsui as his star player.

Current Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani took to Instagram on Tuesday to honor Nagashima. He posted three pictures of the two of them together, including two from the Dodgers’ trip to Tokyo in February for two games against the Chicago Cubs.

“May your soul rest in peace,” Ohtani wrote in Japanese.

Nagashima could have become the first Japanese MLB player, and he could have done so as a member of the Dodgers. In the spring of 1961, the Yomiuri Giants visited Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Fla., to train and play exhibition games.

Shigeo Nagashima stands between San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds, left, and New York Mets manager Art Howe at an event in Tokyo on Nov. 7, 2002.

(David Guttenfelder / Associated Press)

Then-Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley is said to have been so impressed with Nagashima — who in the previous season had won the second of what would be six straight batting crowns in Nippon’s Central League — that he offered to buy Nagashima’s contract from Giants owner Matsutaro Shoriki.

Shoriki turned O’Malley down, and pitcher Masanori Murakami ended up becoming the first Japanese MLB player when he debuted with the San Francisco Giants in 1965. Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck also attempted to purchase Nagashima’s contract in 1968 but also was thwarted by Shoriki.

Nagashima maintained a close relationship with the Dodgers and the O’Malley family, particularly with Walter’s son Peter, according to Walter O’Malley’s website.

The Dodgers posted a tribute to Nagashima on X, featuring a photo of the 1988 Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame inductee with legendary Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda.

“The Dodgers mourn the passing of Shigeo Nagashima, Japan’s ‘Mr. Baseball,’ who died Tuesday in Tokyo at age 89,” the team wrote. “Nagashima became a legend for the Yomiuri Giants, who have enjoyed a longstanding relationship with the Dodgers from as far back as the 1960s. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and generations of fans.”

Nagashima’s wife, Akiko, died in 2007. They had four children, including oldest son Kazushige, a former professional baseball player who played for the Yomiuri Giants and Yakult Swallows in Japan, as well as 53 games for the Class A-Advanced Vero Beach Dodgers minor league affiliate in 1992.

John Brenkus, the charismatic TV host who found creative ways to get sports fans to think about science, has died, his production company, Brinx.TV, said Sunday in a statement.

“John, co-founder of Base Productions, founder of Brinx.TV, and co-creator and host of the 6-time Emmy Award-winning ‘Sport Science,’ had been battling depression,” the statement read. “John lost his fight with this terrible illness on May 31st, 2025.”

The statement added that Brenkus’ “heartbroken family and friends request privacy at this time, and encourage anyone who is struggling with depression to seek help.”

Brenkus grew up in Vienna, Va., and was a participant in multiple Ironman Triathlon races. Also a successful businessman and media producer, Brenkus was best known as the host of “Sport Science.”

The show aired from 2007-2017, first on Fox Sports as hour-long episodes for two seasons, then on ESPN in segment form within the network’s other programs. It featured scientific experiments that tested common notions about athletes, their abilities and the capacity of the human body.

In addition to the participation of numerous sports stars, Brenkus would often take part in the experiments, putting himself “in harm’s way for the sake of scientific discovery,” as ESPN once put it.

“Standing a very average 5’ 8” tall, and tipping the scales at an equally average 160 pounds, Brenkus intersperses his hosting and executive producing duties on Sport Science with performances as the show’s ‘Everyman,’ to help demonstrate what happens when a regular guy steps on the field, into the ring, or on the court with top athletes at the top of their games,” a 2009 ESPN press release stated. “Along the way, he helps audiences understand their own physiologies and how to improve their overall performance, health and well-being.”

ESPN’s Randy Scott remembered his former colleague, who was reportedly 53 when he died, Monday morning on “SportsCenter.”

“John was uniquely talented and singularly brilliant at not only analyzing sports but then translating sports and science to generations of fans in memorable ways, because John was memorable,” Scott said. “… This world was a better place with John Brenkus in it.”

Mike “The Body Snatcher” McCallum was so feared for his impeccable technique that the “four kings” of the 1980s declined to fight him. Nevertheless, McCallum won world titles at super welterweight, middleweight and light heavyweight and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2003.

McCallum, the first Jamaican-born champion, died Saturday in Las Vegas at 68. The Jamaica Observer reported that McCallum fell ill while driving to a gym and pulled off the road. He was found to be unresponsive, and was later pronounced dead.

In the ring, his attention to detail and faultless technique enabled him to post a 49-5-1 record. McCallum earned his nickname by repeatedly punching the body and head. More often than not, bouts ended in knockouts — he recorded 36 KOs and was never knocked out.

The Ring magazine ranked him in 2011 as eighth on its list of the “10 best middleweight title holders of the last 50 years.”

Not that his inability to secure a bout with the “kings,” Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard or Marvin Hagler, spoiled his mood. It was particularly telling that Hearns wouldn’t fight McCallum, because they were longtime sparring partners before becoming champions.

McCallum was disappointed but remained all smiles outside the ring, consistently carrying himself with a pleasant, if serious, disposition.

“None of ‘The Four Kings,’ wanted anything to do with that guy and I know that for a fact because I tried to make some of those fights,” Hall of Fame boxer Lou DiBella told longtime boxing writer Kevin Iole. “He was the most perfect technical fighter I’ve ever seen, and he wasn’t a pitty-pat guy.”

McCallum became the first Jamaican boxer to win a world title when he defeated Irishman Sean Mannion by unanimous decision in 1984 at Madison Square Garden for the WBA Junior Middleweight crown.

Jamaican Sport Minister Olivia Grange issued a statement upon learning of McCallum’s passing, saying, “It is with utter and complete sadness that I learned of the death of Jamaica’s three-time World Boxing Champion Michael McKenzie McCallum.

“I express my personal condolences to his mother, siblings and his children. On behalf of the Ministry of Sports I take this opportunity to extend our sympathies to the family and friends of this legendary Jamaican.”

Michael McKenzie McCallum was born Dec. 7, 1956, in Kingston, Jamaica, and began boxing as a teenager, racking up as many as 250 amateur bouts before turning pro in 1981. He represented Jamaica at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, reaching the quarterfinals.

He boxed professionally until 1997, successfully defending the WBA junior middleweight crown six times, including wins over Julian Jackson, Milton McCrory and Donald Curry before moving up a weight class to middleweight.

McCallum defeated Herol Graham in 1989 to become WBA middleweight champion and defended the belt with wins over Steve Collins, Michael Watson and Sumbu Kalambay. He won his third division title in 1994 by again stepping up in weight class and defeating Jeff Harding for the WBC light heavyweight crown.

He met his match against James Toney, fighting to a draw Dec. 13, 1991, before losing to Toney twice. McCallum also dropped a 12-round decision to Roy Jones in a 1997 light heavyweight title fight.

He retired shortly thereafter and became a successful trainer, taking great pride in teaching his body-punching technique to young boxers.

Jones expressed sadness to Kevin Iole, saying, “Man, we lost another beautiful boxing soul. May he rest in peace.”

Jones also lamented that McCallum was unable to book fights against the four kings.

“In the junior middleweight division, everyone always went around Mike McCallum, and that says a lot about him,” Jones said. “Not even Marvin [Hagler] ever talked much about fighting Mike McCallum. You don’t have to listen to what they say [about him]. You watch what they do and everyone wanted to go around him for a reason.”

In a post on X, the WBC said: “Rest in Peace to the legendary Mike ‘The Body Snatcher’ McCallum. Former WBA world champion and one of the most technically gifted fighters of his era. Thank you for the fights, the lessons, and the greatness.”

A FORMER model and Corrie actress has passed away aged 85.

Barbara Ferris played a barmaid in Coronation Street in 1962.

She played the part of Nona Willis, at the Rovers Return, but left the drama after 10 episodes because she didn’t understand the accents.

Ferris may best be remembered as Dinah, the woman who eloped with Dave Clark in the 1965 film Catch Us If You Can.

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Loretta Swit, who won two Emmy awards for her role on the popular comedy TV series MASH, died on Friday, according to her representative.

She died at her home in New York at the age of 87, the BBC’s news partner CBS reported, citing a statement from her representative. She likely died of natural causes, although a coroner’s report is pending.

On MASH, Swit played the Army nurse Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan. The series, which followed the fortunes of a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War, ran for 11 seasons from 1974 to 1983.

Swit was nominated for numerous awards, and appeared in nearly every episode of the series, including the finale which attracted a record 106m US viewers.