King of Detroit
Obituary: Lee Iacocca
America’s car salesman-in-chief died on July 2nd

Obituary: Georges Brossard, the man who stuck up for insects
By David Walker
BBC News



Georges Brossard dedicated his life to helping humans appreciate the underappreciated world of insects.
Brossard, who has died aged 79, gave up a career in law to travel the world and collect more than 250,000 specimens, a collection that would eventually become one of Montreal's most visited tourist attractions.
He inspired millions through regular TV appearances, raising the profile of tiny creatures he believed were misunderstood and undervalued in human society.
One particular journey to find a rare insect - an extraordinary trip into the Mexican rainforest - would go on to inspire a film.

Andrea Camilleri, the Sicilian author behind the popular Inspector Montalbano television series, has died aged 93.
One of Italy's best-loved writers, he had been admitted to a hospital in Rome last month after a cardiac arrest.
The crime writer was best-known for his detective books starring inspector Salvo Montalbano based in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigàta.
The adapted Rai TV series was loved in Italy and became popular in the UK, US, France, Spain, Germany and Australia.
Camilleri lost his sight in recent years but said in 2017 it had allowed him to picture things more clearly.

Christopher C. Kraft Jr., the legendary founder of NASA’s mission control, who directed America’s first piloted orbital flights, oversaw the Apollo 11 lunar landing and was director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, died on Monday in Houston, two days after the 50th anniversary of that historic moment on the moon. He was 95.

NASA announced the death.

For 25 years, from the dawn of the space age in the 1950s to the threshold of almost routine launchings in the 1980s, Mr. Kraft played crucial roles in the space program. He devised the protocols for exploration beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, orchestrated early orbital missions and spacewalks, and developed projects that put astronauts on the moon and into the first reusable space shuttles.

Aside from the astronauts who made history — including Alan B. Shepard Jr., with his suborbital flight; John Glenn, in orbiting the Earth; and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first to land on the lunar surface — Mr. Kraft was the most familiar face of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s early years, the steady ground commander who often explained missions to a rapt world at news conferences.

In an era of perilous experiments hastened by the Soviet success of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, Mr. Kraft presided over triumphal breakthroughs in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects. He also stood by helplessly when a fire killed three astronauts on a launchpad in 1967, but he helped devise the ingenious plan that saved the Apollo 13 crew after an explosion crippled their spacecraft en route to the moon in 1970.

At a time when there were no rules or procedures for space travel, Mr. Kraft, a brilliant aeronautical engineer, virtually wrote the book for NASA. He originated the concept of mission control, with authority vested in a ground-based flight director, not in a pilot-astronaut soaring through space at 7 miles a second who might be overwhelmed by pressures, especially during launch or re-entry.

Actor Rutger Hauer, who starred in 1982's Blade Runner, has died at the age of 75.

His agent confirmed the star died in the Netherlands on Friday after a short illness.

Hauer played the murderous replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner, which was directed by Ridley Scott and also starred Harrison Ford.

The actor's funeral was held on Wednesday.

Hauer's character gave a famous speech during a climatic face-off with Ford at the end of Blade Runner, dialogue which he helped write himself.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe," he is seen telling Ford. "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

Jeffrey Epstein: Financier 'found dead in cell' in New York

Financier Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in his prison cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, US media report.
His body was discovered at 07:30 local time (11:30 GMT) on Saturday at a facility in New York.
He was reportedly on suicide watch following an earlier incident in which he was found injured in his cell.
Epstein, 66, had pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and conspiracy charges and was being held without bail.
Last month, shortly after he was denied bail, he was found semi-conscious in his cell with injuries to his neck. He was treated at a nearby hospital, reports say, before being returned to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
The facility is widely considered to be one of the most secure in the country.
Epstein's death comes a day after hundreds of pages of court documents were released that revealed new allegations against him and some of his associates.

Macdoc wrote:didn't want to soil this thread...he had his own notoriaty thread going anyways.