AP News, June 2nd, 2007
Warren Anderson
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) _ Warren Anderson, the courtly Republican majority leader of New York's state Senate from 1973-88, has died. He was 91.
He died Friday at Wilson Hospital in Johnson City, said James Orband of Anderson's Binghamton-based law firm, Hinman, Howard & Kattell. No cause of death was immediately available.
Anderson served in the Senate from 1953-88. He was a key player with Gov. Hugh Carey and the late Stanley Steingut, a Brooklyn Democrat who was state Assembly speaker, in fashioning the package that saved New York City from bankruptcy in 1975.
Anderson had been a close ally of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and shared the patrician Republican's moderate-to-liberal leanings. An abortion rights supporter, Anderson championed a 15 percent increase in welfare benefits in 1981.
A year later, he played a key role in enacting a surcharge on corporate franchise taxes in order to bail out the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the New York City area's mass transit system.
Anderson was famous in Albany for a special way of declaring when it was time for the Senate to wrap up its sessions: He would appear on the floor wearing garish sport coats. One year, it was a red coat that looked like it belonged on a circus ringmaster.
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Mark Harris
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) _ Mark Harris, best known for baseball novels that included "Bang the Drum Slowly," narrated by the fictional Henry Wiggen, has died. He was 84.
Harris died at Cottage Hospital on Wednesday, a month after he broke his hip in a fall and contracted pneumonia, said his wife, Josephine. Harris had Alzheimer's disease, she said.
Harris wrote five nonfiction books and 13 novels, including the baseball books "The Southpaw" (1953), "Bang the Drum Slowly" (1956), "A Ticket for a Seamstitch" (1957) and "It Looked Like Forever" (1979).
"Bang the Drum Slowly," which he also adapted for the 1973 movie starring Michael Moriarty and Robert De Niro, was the most popular of the four and it was named one of the top 100 sports books of all time by Sports Illustrated.
The story centers around a pair of ballplayers for the fictionally fabled New York Mammoths. Moriarty played pitcher Wiggen and De Niro played catcher Bruce Pearson, who is dying of Hodgkin's disease.
"Diamond," a collection of Harris' baseball essays over nearly a half-century, was published in 1994.
His nonfiction books included "City of Discontent: An Interpretive Biography of Vachel Lindsay," "Mark the Glove Boy, or The Last Days of Richard Nixon," and "Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck."
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Huang Ju
BEIJING (AP) _ Vice Premier Huang Ju, a key ally of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin who climbed the ranks of Shanghai politics to join the Communist Party's inner sanctum of power, has died, the official Xinhua News Agency said. He was 68.
Xinhua did not disclose the cause of death, though Huang had been ill, reportedly with pancreatic cancer, for much of the past two years. He died early Saturday.
Xinhua said the Chinese leadership in its official obituary of Huang called him "a long-tested and faithful communist fighter" _ a traditional description for a leader who dies in good standing.
Huang ranked No. 6 in the party hierarchy. Because of his illness, Huang had been expected to retire later this year at an important party congress, a once-every-five-years event that normally occasions sharp infighting for senior posts.
A technocrat and administrator, Huang was not associated with particular policies or reforms. Rather, he was best known for his relationship to former President Jiang.
Both were Shanghai party leaders, Jiang in the 1980s, Huang in the 1990s. Huang worked for several years with Jiang, who was picked to lead the Communist Party in 1989, after the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.
When Jiang stepped down as party leader in 2002 to make way for Hu, Huang was among a handful of allies Jiang maneuvered into the party's inner sanctum _ the nine-seat Politburo Standing Committee _ to safeguard his influence and legacy.
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Preston Martin
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Preston Martin, once the No. 2 officer at the Federal Reserve, who advocated for fair lending practices, has died. He was 83.
Martin died Wednesday at his home after a brief battle with cancer, said his stepdaughter, Margaret Lowrie Robertson.
Martin was vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1982 to 1986. He was also the first central bank governor appointed by President Ronald Reagan.
President Richard Nixon named him chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, a government agency providing financing to savings and loans, and Martin was California's top savings and loan regulator when Reagan was the state's governor.
As a federal official in the early 1970s, he helped create Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored agency that bought mortgages and packaged them for sale to investors. After leaving government in 1972, he founded the PMI Mortgage Insurance Co.
During his years at the Fed, Mr. Martin was known as a Reagan loyalist who challenged Chairman Paul Volcker's tough anti-inflation policies.
Martin had been regarded as a possible successor to Volcker as Fed chairman. But Volcker was a Wall Street favorite, and Reagan appointed Alan Greenspan in 1987.
Martin was also one of the first federal financial regulators to make fair lending a top priority. As chief of the Federal Home Loan Bank, he took a tough stand against redlining, the policy of steering credit away from poor and minority communities.
