Horst Köhler, who became Germany’s president after being a financial engineer behind the reunification of Germany and the creation several decades later of the euro currency, died on Saturday. He was 81. The German president’s office, in a statement on behalf of his family, said that Mr. Köhler had died in Berlin after a short … Read more
Phyllis Dalton, a British costume designer whose unflinching attention to detail earned her Oscars for “Doctor Zhivago” and “Henry V” and acclaim for her emotive, striking costumes in “Lawrence of Arabia,” died on Jan. 9 at her home in Somerset, England. She was 99. The death was confirmed by her stepson, James Barton. Ms. Dalton’s … Read more
In his first years in office, he partly delivered on his promises, providing school supplies and uniforms, building hospitals and reducing the price of medicine. He made conciliatory speeches, apologizing for the right-wing government’s massacres of civilians during the civil war and, in 2010, for the assassination in 1980 of Archbishop Óscar Romero, a fierce … Read more
The Rev. François Ponchaud, a French Catholic priest whose book “Cambodia: Year Zero” alerted the world to the atrocities being committed by the communist Khmer Rouge that would eventually take the lives of nearly two million people, died on Jan. 17 in Lauris, France. He was 86. His death was announced by the Paris Foreign … Read more
Mike Hynson, who epitomized the image of the bronzed surf god as a star of the hit 1966 surfing documentary “The Endless Summer” and, with his outlaw instincts, embodied the rebel ethos of the sport on his way to being hailed a colossus of the curl, died on Jan. 10 in Encinitas, Calif. He was … Read more
Derek Humphry, a British-born journalist whose experience helping his terminally-ill wife end her life led him to become a crusading pioneer in the right-to-die movement and publish “Final Exit,” a best-selling guide to suicide, died on Jan. 2 in Eugene, Ore. He was 94. His death, at a hospice facility, was announced by his family. … Read more
Arthur Blessitt, whose fervent efforts to convert the hippies, freaks and addicts along Hollywood’s Sunset Strip were just a prelude to his decision to carry a 110-pound wooden cross from Los Angeles to New York City — and then to keep going, eventually traveling 43,340 miles through every country on the planet — died on … Read more
Bertrand Blier, an acclaimed director whose films scandalized, captivated and entertained 1970s and ’80s France with their sometimes brutal projections of French men’s sexual imaginations, died on Monday at his home in Paris. He was 85. His death was confirmed by his son Léonard Blier. For two decades Mr. Blier was one of France’s most … Read more
Charles Phan, a self-taught chef whose family fled Vietnam when he was a teenager and whose sleek restaurant helped change America’s perception of Asian food by replacing menus of inexpensive noodle dishes and spring rolls with ones that married the best local ingredients with the food he grew up on, died on Monday in San … Read more
Clinton Bailey, an American-Israeli academic whose research and documentation of the ancient traditions of the nomadic Bedouin tribes of the Middle East helped preserve a vanishing culture for posterity, died on Jan. 5 at his home in Jerusalem. He was 88. The cause was heart failure, his son Michael said. A native of Buffalo, Dr. … Read more