AP Features, December 2nd, 2007
Rassim al-Jumaili
BAGHDAD (AP) — Rassim al-Jumaili, a veteran Iraqi comedian who left his homeland for Syria after the U.S. invasion and played a sarcastic dictator in his final role earlier this year, died Saturday, a colleague said. He was 69.
Al-Jumaili died in neighboring Syria, where he fled in 2003, joining dozens of Iraqi actors escaping the violence in their country, friends and colleagues said. He died of kidney failure, said Yahya Al-Jaberi, the head of the Iraqi Artists Syndicate. Al-Jaberi was among some 100 Iraqis gathered outside the hospital hours after al-Jumaili's death was announced.
Iraqi president Jalal Talabani said he personally would pay to have al-Jumaili's body transported to Iraq.
His last role was in "The Leader" series, which was widely seen in Iraq during the holy month of Ramadan, in which he played an unnamed, sarcastic dictator. The series, which depicted the daily suffering of Iraqis, was believed to be a parody of the post-Saddam administration.
Al-Jumaili was born in a poor Baghdad neighborhood in 1938. He graduated from the Collegue of Fine Arts in 1964 and joined the army as an officer and member of the military theater. In the early 1980s, he broke into the entertainment business performing in stage productions in Baghdad.
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Seymour Benzer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Seymour Benzer, a groundbreaking biologist whose work linking behavior and genes laid the foundation for modern neuroscience, has died. He was 86.
Benzer died of a stroke Friday morning at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, said Jill Perry, a spokeswoman for the California Institute of Technology, where Benzer was professor emeritus.
Benzer's research in the 1960s countered the common belief that human behavior was shaped primarily by environment, giving genes a far bigger role than they were previously assigned.
His research led to major discoveries in the exploration of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
In perhaps his most well-known work, Benzer manipulated the gene mutations of fruit flies in the late 1960s.
That and related work essentially led to the new field of neurogenetics.
Benzer was still working late in his life. As recently as the late 1990s, he and colleagues discovered a gene that let fruit flies live longer and resist heat, starvation and even poison.
Benzer received more than 40 major awards, including the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the National Medal of Science, the Peter Gruber Award for Neuroscience and the $500,000 Albany Medical Center prize, the nation's richest prize in medicine and biomedical research.
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Reynaldo P. Glover
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Reynaldo P. Glover, chairman of the Fisk University board of trustees, has died. He was 64.
Glover died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer, the school announced. He had served as chairman of the historically black university's board of trustees since February 2004.
He was at the helm during the cash-strapped school's controversial attempt to sell artworks donated to the school by Georgia O'Keeffe to raise money. That effort has become bogged down in the courts because the donation was made under the condition that it would not be sold. But, the school's attorneys said Fisk could run out of cash by the end of the year.
Glover earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1968 and began his legal career as national executive director of the Law Student Civil Rights Research Council in New York.
He later went into private practice in Chicago. He served as chairman of the board of trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago from 1988 to 1991.
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Bobby Van
GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) — Bobby Van, a Juilliard-trained pianist who founded a landmark Hamptons "gin-mill" frequented by artists Willem De Kooning and Roy Lichtenstein, along with literary giants including Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut and Willie Morris, has died. He was 64.
Robert Craig Van Velsor, known as Bobby Van, died of a staph infection on Tuesday, said his ex-wife, Marina Van.
Although he sold the restaurant in 1986, for nearly two decades Van played host to nightly gatherings by some of the world's greatest writers and artists, drawn to the mahogany wood decor and Tiffany lamps in the saloon in the middle of downtown Bridgehampton.
Other writers frequently seen hanging out at "Van's" included George Plimpton, Irwin Shaw, Winston Groom and James Jones, Marina Van said.
Although he dropped out of Juilliard for financial reasons, Van never lost his love of the piano — a centerpiece of his Bridgehampton saloon.
After serving in the Army in Vietnam, Van opened the restaurant in 1969. There are now four other Bobby Van's Steakhouses in New York City and two in Washington.
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Betsy Zaborowski
BALTIMORE (AP) — Betsy A. Zaborowski, who provided education, employment and adaptive technologies for the blind and served in several leadership positions with the National Federation of the Blind, has died. She was 58.
Zaborowski died of cancer Thursday morning at her home in Denver, said her husband, James Gashel.
Zaborowski was diagnosed with retinal blastoma at age 3 and later lost her eyesight.
From 2003 through this year, Zaborowski served as executive director of the NFB's Jernigan Institute, a research and training facility. She also spent eight years as the NFB's director of special projects.
Among the institute's programs was a summer science academy for blind middle and high school students that offered new ways for the blind to participate directly in scientific experiments.
