PARIS (AP) — Brigitte Bardot, the French 1960s sex symbol who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later a militant animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91.

Bardot died Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals. Speaking to The Associated Press, he gave no cause of death, and said that no arrangements had been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month.

Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in the 1956 movie “And God Created Woman.” Directed by then husband Roger Vadim, it triggered a scandal with scenes of the long-legged beauty dancing on tables naked.

At the height of a cinema career that spanned more than two dozen films and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolize a nation bursting out of bourgeois respectability. Her tousled, blond hair, voluptuous figure and pouty irreverence made her one of France’s best-known stars, even as she struggled with depression.

Such was her widespread appeal that in 1969 her features were chosen to be the model for “Marianne,” the national emblem of France and the official Gallic seal. Bardot’s face appeared on statues, postage stamps and coins.

‘’We are mourning a legend,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in an X post.

Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She traveled to the Arctic to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals. She also condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments, and she opposed Muslim slaughter rituals.

“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The Associated Press on her 73rd birthday, in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of an animal that suffers, since it has no power, no words to defend itself.”

Her activism earned her compatriots’ respect and, in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honor, the nation’s highest recognition.

Turn to the far right

Later, however, she fell from public grace as her animal protection diatribes took on a decidedly extremist tone. She frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims.

She was convicted and fined five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred, in incidents inspired by her opposition to the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays.

Bardot’s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, a onetime adviser to far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, contributed to her political shift. She described Le Pen, an outspoken nationalist with multiple racism convictions of his own, as a “lovely, intelligent man.”

In 2012, she supported the presidential bid of Marine Le Pen, who now leads her father’s renamed National Rally party. Le Pen paid homage Sunday to an “exceptional woman” who was “incredibly French.”

In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Bardot said in an interview that most actors protesting sexual harassment in the film industry were “hypocritical,” because many played “the teases” with producers to land parts.

She said she had never had been a victim of sexual harassment and found it “charming to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a nice little ass.”

Privileged but ‘difficult’ upbringing

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born Sept. 28, 1934, to a wealthy industrialist. A shy child, she studied classical ballet and was discovered by a family friend who put her on the cover of Elle magazine at age 14.

Bardot once described her childhood as “difficult” and said that her father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes punish her with a horse whip.

Vadim, a French movie produce who she married in 1952, saw her potential and wrote “And God Created Woman” to showcase her provocative sensuality, an explosive cocktail of childlike innocence and raw sexuality.

The film, which portrayed Bardot as a teen who marries to escape an orphanage and then beds her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, and came to embody the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s.

The film was a box-office hit, and it made Bardot a superstar. Her girlish pout, tiny waist and generous bust were often more appreciated than her talent.

“It’s an embarrassment to have acted so badly,” Bardot said of her early films. “I suffered a lot in the beginning. I was really treated like someone less than nothing.”

Bardot’s unabashed, off-screen love affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant eradicated the boundaries between her public and private life and turned her into a hot prize for paparazzi.

Bardot never adjusted to the limelight. She blamed the constant media attention for the suicide attempt that followed 10 months after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Photographers had broken into her house two weeks before she gave birth to snap a picture of her pregnant.

Nicolas’ father was Jacques Charrier, a French actor who she married in 1959 but who never felt comfortable in his role as Monsieur Bardot. Bardot soon gave up her son to his father, and later said she had been chronically depressed and unready for the duties of being a mother.

“I was looking for roots then,” she said in an interview. “I had none to offer.”

In her 1996 autobiography “Initiales B.B.,” she likened her pregnancy to “a tumor growing inside me,” and described Charrier as “temperamental and abusive.”

Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966, and they divorced three years later.

Among her films were “A Parisian” (1957); “In Case of Misfortune,” in which she starred in 1958 with screen legend Jean Gabin; “The Truth” (1960); “Private Life” (1962); “A Ravishing Idiot” (1964); “Shalako” (1968); “Women” (1969); “The Bear And The Doll” (1970); “Rum Boulevard” (1971); and “Don Juan” (1973).

With the exception of 1963’s critically acclaimed “Contempt,” directed by Godard, Bardot’s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles to display Bardot in scanty dresses or frolicking nude in the sun.

“It was never a great passion of mine,” she said of filmmaking. “And it can be deadly sometimes. Marilyn (Monroe) perished because of it.”

Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in St. Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after “The Woman Grabber.” As fans brought flowers to her home Sunday, the local St. Tropez administration called for “respect for the privacy of her family and the serenity of the places where she lived.”

Middle-aged reinvention

She emerged a decade later with a new persona: An animal rights lobbyist, her face was wrinkled and her voice was deep following years of heavy smoking. She abandoned her jet-set life and sold off movie memorabilia and jewelry to create a foundation devoted exclusively to the prevention of animal cruelty.

Depression sometimes dogged her, and she said that she attempted suicide again on her 49th birthday.

Her activism knew no borders. She urged South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to U.S. President Bill Clinton asking why the U.S. Navy recaptured two dolphins it had released into the wild.

She attacked centuries-old French and Italian sporting traditions including the Palio, a free-for-all horse race, and campaigned on behalf of wolves, rabbits, kittens and turtle doves.

“It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things move forward … my distress takes over,” Bardot told the AP when asked about her racial hatred convictions and opposition to Muslim ritual slaughter,

In 1997, several towns removed Bardot-inspired statues of Marianne after the actress voiced anti-immigrant sentiment. Also that year, she received death threats after calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat.

Environmental campaigner Paul Watson, who was beaten on a seal hunt protest in Canada alongside Bardot in 1977 and campaigned with her for five decades, acknowledged that “many disagreed with Brigitte’s politics or some of her views.”

“Her allegiance was not to the world of humans,” he said. “The animals of this world lost a wonderful friend today.”

Bardot once said that she identified with the animals that she was trying to save.

“I can understand hunted animals, because of the way I was treated,” Bardot said. “What happened to me was inhuman. I was constantly surrounded by the world press.”

___

Elaine Ganley provided reporting for this story before her retirement. Angela Charlton contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — Norman Podhoretz, the boastful, hard-line editor and author whose books, essays and stewardship of Commentary magazine marked a political and deeply personal break from the left and made him a leader of the neo-conservative movement, has died. He was 95.

Podhoretz died “peacefully and without pain” Tuesday night, his son John Podhoretz confirmed in a statement on Commentary’s website. His cause of death was not immediately released.

“He was a man of great wit and a man of deep wisdom and he lived an astonishing and uniquely American life,” John Podhoretz said.

Norman Podhoretz was among the last of the so-called “New York intellectuals” of the mid-20th century, a famously contentious circle that at various times included Norman Mailer, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag and Lionel Trilling. As a young man, Podhoretz longed to join them. In middle age, he departed. Like Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb and other founding neo-conservatives, Podhoretz began turning from the liberal politics he shared with so many peers and helped reshape the national dialogue in the 1960s and after.

The son of Jewish immigrants, Podhoretz was 30 when he was named editor-in-chief of Commentary in 1960, and years later transformed the once-liberal magazine into an essential forum for conservatives. Two future U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, received their appointments in part because of essays they published in Commentary that called for a more assertive foreign policy.

Despised by former allies, Podhoretz found new friends all the way to the White House, from President Ronald Reagan, a reader of Commentary; to President George W. Bush, who in 2004 awarded Podhoretz the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and praised him as a “man of “fierce intellect” who never “tailored his opinion to please others.”

Podhoretz, who stepped down as editor-in-chief in 1995, had long welcomed argument. The titles of his books were often direct and provocative: “Making It,” “The Present Danger,” “World War IV,” “Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer.” He pressed for confrontation everywhere from El Salvador to Iran, and even disparaged Reagan for talking to Soviet leaders, calling such actions “the Reagan road to detente.” For decades, he rejected criticism of Israel, once writing that “hostility toward Israel” is not only rooted in antisemitism but a betrayal of “the virtues and values of Western civilization.”

Meanwhile, Podhoretz became a choice target for disparagement and creative license. New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani called “World War IV” an “illogical screed based on cherry-picked facts and blustering assertions.” Ginsberg, once a fellow student at Columbia University, would mock the heavy-set editor for having “a great ridiculous fat-bellied mind which he pats too often.” Joseph Heller used Podhoretz as the model for the crass Maxwell Lieberman in his novel “Good as Gold.” Woody Allen cited Podhoretz’s magazine in “Annie Hall,” joking that Commentary and the leftist Dissent had merged and renamed themselves Dysentery.

Born to succeed

Podhoretz never doubted he would be famous. Born and raised in a working class neighborhood in Brooklyn, he would credit the adoration of his family with giving him a sense of destiny. By his own account, Podhoretz was “the smartest kid in the class,” brash and competitive, a natural striver who believed that “One of the longest journeys in the world is the journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan.”

He would indeed arrive in the great borough, and beyond, thriving as an English major at Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1950, and receiving a master’s degree in England from Cambridge University. By his mid-20s, he was publishing reviews in all the best magazines, from The New Yorker to Partisan Review, and socializing with Mailer, Hellman and others.

He was named associate editor of Commentary in 1956, and given the top job four years later. Around the same time, he married the writer and editor Midge Decter, another future neo-conservative, and remained with her until her death in 2022.

In childhood, Norman Podhoretz’s world was so liberal that he later claimed he never met a Republican until high school. When Podhoretz took over Commentary, founded in 1945 by the American Jewish Committee, the magazine was a small, anti-Communist publication. Podhoretz’s initial goal was to move it to the left — he serialized Paul Goodman’s “Growing Up Absurd,” published articles advocating unilateral disarmament — and make it more intellectual, with James Baldwin, Alfred Kazin and Irving Howe among the contributors. Subscriptions increased dramatically.

But signs of the conservative future also appeared, and of his own confusion over a world in transition. He was a prominent critic of Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and other Beat writers, dismissing the upstart movement in 1958 as a “revolt of the spiritually underprivileged” and branding Kerouac a “know-nothing.” In a 1963 essay, Podhoretz admitted to being terrified of Black people as a child, agonized over “his own twisted feelings,” wondered whether he, or anyone, could change and concluded that “the wholesale merging of the two races is the most desirable alternative for everyone concerned.”

Liberal no more

“Making It,” released in 1967, was a final turning point. A blunt embrace of status seeking, the book was shunned and mocked by the audience Podhoretz cared about most: New York intellectuals. Podhoretz would look back on his early years and conclude that to advance in the world one had to make a “brutal bargain” with the upper classes, in part by acknowledging they were the upper classes. Friends urged him not to publish “Making It,” his agent wanted nothing to do with it and his original publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, refused to promote it (Podhoretz gave back his advance and switched to Random House). Even worse, he was no longer welcome at literary parties, a deep wound for an author who had confessed that “at the precocious age of 35 I experienced an astonishing revelation: It is better to be a success than a failure.”

By the end of the decade, Podhoretz was sympathizing less with the young leftists of the 1960s than with the way of life they were opposing. Like other neo-conservatives, he remained supportive of Democrats into the 1970s, but allied himself with more traditional politicians such as Edmund Muskie rather than the anti-Vietnam War candidate George McGovern. He would accuse the left of hostility to Israel and tolerance of antisemitism at home, with Gore Vidal (who called Podhoretz a “publicist for Israel”) a prime target. Echoing the opinions of Decter, he also rejected the feminist and gay rights movements as symptoms of a “plague” among “the kind of women who do not wish to be women and among those men who do not wish to be men.”

“Tact is unknown to the Podhoretzes,” Vidal wrote of Podhoretz and Decter in 1986. “Joyously they revel in the politics of hate.”

Podhoretz was close to Moynihan, and he worked on the New York Democrat’s successful Senate run in 1976, when in the primary Moynihan narrowly defeated the more liberal Bella Abzug. From 1981 to 1987, during the Reagan administration, Podhoretz served as an adviser to the United States Information Agency and helped write Kirkpatrick’s widely quoted 1984 convention speech that chastised those who “blame America first.” He was a foreign policy adviser for Republican Rudolph Giuliani’s brief presidential run in 2008 and, late in life, broke again with onetime allies when he differed with other conservatives and backed Donald Trump.

“I began to be bothered by the hatred against Trump that was building up from my soon to be new set of ex-friends,” he told the Claremont Review of Books in 2019. “You could think he was unfit for office — I could understand that — but my ex-friends’ revulsion was always accompanied by attacks on the people who supported him. They called them dishonorable, or opportunists or cowards — and this was done by people like Bret Stephens, Bill Kristol, various others.

“And I took offense at that. So that inclined me to what I then became: anti-anti-Trump.”

Diamond died on Dec. 11 at 73, following several years battling multiple forms of cancer.

Born in 1952, Diamond received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and rabbinical ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University from 1968 to 1977.

But it was at JTS, the Conservative flagship in New York City, where Diamond earned his doctorate in Talmud and was the Rabbi Judah Nadich Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics, that his talents for mentorship and teaching flourished.

“My beloved teacher, a precious mentor and friend to countless Jewish leaders, Rabbi Eliezer Diamond z”l, has departed this world for the next,” wrote Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a scholar in residence and rabbi for the UJA-Federation of New York, in a post on Facebook. “His wisdom changed the course of my rabbinate many times over, something I know to be true for many others.”

Over his long career as a highly respected Talmud scholar, Diamond published a chapter on the rabbinic period in the “Schocken Guide to Jewish Books,” as well as entries in the “Reader’s Guide to Judaism” and “The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception.” In 2003, he published his only book, “Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture,” with the Oxford University Press.

Diamond retired from JTS after the fall 2024 semester. In March during the previous semester, his legacy at the school was celebrated in a program titled “Diamonds of Torah: Honoring Rabbi Eliezer Diamond’s Teaching.”

“Generations of students have been profoundly impacted by his teaching, while his writings on prayer, asceticism, and issues of environmental law and ethics have influenced so many in the wider Jewish world as well,” wrote Shuly Rubin Schwartz, the chancellor of JTS, in a statement announcing his retirement.

On Facebook, where Diamond frequently posted photos of his wife, Rabbi Shelley Kniaz, five children and numerous grandchildren, he also documented his health struggles, providing deeply personal and rabbinic testimonies of his experience.

After hearing a grim prognosis in August 2024, Diamond posted, “I am not a statistic; I am a distinct human being, Eliezer Ben-Zion, son of Yehuda Idel and Chaya Golde. No one can know what the Shekhina’s plan is for me. What I do know is that She does not want me to live in the shadow of death but rather to bask in the radiance of life.”

As news of his death spread on Dec. 12, many of Diamond’s former students and friends eulogized him on social media, many of them calling attention to Diamond’s legendary kindness.

Rabbi Ben Goldberg, a former student of Diamond and the rabbi of Congregation KTI in Port Chester, New York, wrote on Facebook that Diamond had “passed on to the supernal yeshiva, where I imagine he will be as beloved as he was in all of the places he taught in this world.” He recalled his time in Diamond’s classes at JTS where, he wrote, it was clear to all that Diamond “cared deeply about his students.”

“More than anything about Talmud, I’ll remember him writing lengthy (and unnecessary) notes of apology for saying something in class that might have been hurtful (which of course, it wasn’t),” Goldberg wrote.

Michael Rosenberg, another former student of Diamond who now serves on the faculty of the Hadar Institute, recalled meeting with Diamond in 2023 where the pair had a conversation that remained with him.

“That conversation was filled with pearl after pearl — about parenting, teaching, being in relationship,” wrote Rosenberg in a post on Facebook. “I am a better parent and teacher because of that conversation, and I am so sad that I will not get to follow up with my teacher and rabbi.”

Beyond his teaching at JTS, Diamond also previously taught at Stern College, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the 92nd Street Y, several Ramah camps and the now-defunct Solomon Schechter High School.

Diamond was also a longtime resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, and congregant of Congregation Beth Sholom, where he regularly held a Torah study session on Shabbat afternoons.

“Rabbi Diamond’s wisdom (and hazzanus [singing]) were matched only by his wit,” wrote David Spielman, who had Diamond as a high school teacher, in a post on Facebook. “A devout Brooklyn Dodgers fan, he once chastised someone for wearing a Yankees cap, saying it was inappropriate attire for Minyan. He would also say that Ebbets Field would be rebuilt ‘Bimharah b’yamainu.’ Rabbi Diamond will be remembered for that wit, wisdom, and perseverance now that his suffering is finally over.”

Beyond the numerous eulogies that have been written for him on social media, Diamond’s prolific reflections on life and faith endure.

“What draws me back to Hashem, if not to my life as a whole, is Psalm 23 גם כי אלך בגי צלמות לא אירא רע כי אתה עמדי. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil for you are with me,’” wrote Diamond in his last post on Facebook. “Wherever I am, God is there too. I hope that I will return home soon.”

For more info, go to JTA.org. 

Her first cookbook “Kosher Cuisine,” was published in 1984 by Random House, and adapted a variety of international recipes for kosher cooks. Its publication, Nash told the Detroit Jewish News at the time, sought to prove that kosher cooking “could be as varied, elegant and exciting as one wished to make it.”

She went on to demonstrate that in two more cookbooks, demonstrating what one reviewer called “her abil­i­ty to expand the kosher palate.”

“Keeping kosher is more, to me, than just a sensible way to live and to eat healthfully. The ancient Jewish dietary laws help to organize my life around family, Friday nights, and holidays,” wrote Nash in her 2012 book, “Helen Nash’s New Kosher Cuisine: Healthy, Simple, and Stylish.”

Nash was born Helen Englander in Krakow, Poland, on Dec. 24, 1935 where her family owned a textile business. With her parents and sister, Nash survived World War II with her family after they were deported to Siberia.

“There was no cook­ing in my child­hood,” Nash told the Jewish Book Council in 2012. “When I was four and a half, my fam­i­ly was trans­port­ed out of Krakow, and we spent the war in labor camps in Siberia. Food was nonex­istent — no fruit, no veg­eta­bles. It was a ration diet of sub­sis­tence level.”

Following the war, Nash’s family reunited with her maternal grandparents in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, before settling in Crown Heights.

In 1957, she met and married her husband, Jack Nash, who was also a refugee from Berlin. Having grown up in an Orthodox family, Nash insisted that she keep a kosher kitchen.

“It was my interest,” Nash told New York Jewish Week in 2015. “Most women didn’t have careers outside the home, and I sort of carved a niche for myself, and the niche was entertaining in a certain style. Jack was very encouraging. And I met so many people I wouldn’t have met if I’d stayed in the religious mode.”

While her husband, who died in 2008, went on to serve as the chairman of the Oppenheimer & Company mutual fund business and founded the revival of The New York Sun, Nash charted her own path in the kitchen.

Following the birth of her children, Joshua and Pamela, Nash took classes with famed chefs including Michael Field and Millie Chan and worked on how to adapt their cuisines to a kosher palate.

Her second cookbook, “Helen Nash’s Kosher Kitchen,” published in 1988, also sought to break boundaries in kosher recipes. “’Kosher food is more than chopped liver and gefilte fish,” said Nash at the time.

“Helen Nash’s New Kosher Cuisine,” published following the death of her husband, also took kosher cooking to new heights, incorporating new global ingredients that had been made kosher since the publication of her earlier books.

Nash also chaired the Nash Family Foundation, which supported numerous Jewish organizations in New York City. She and her husband were also contributors to UJA-Federation of New York, Mount Sinai Medical Center, the Israel Museum, Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a scholar in residence and rabbi for the UJA-Federation of New York, dedicated his recent Torah study on Youtube to Nash.

“Helen Nash was many things, including a renowned author of recipe books and chef, she was a matriarch in her family,” said Creditor. “Her family foundation has changed the Jewish world for the better in countless ways, and I was blessed, privileged since the first moment I began at UJA almost eight years ago to learn Torah with Helen every single Wednesday for these last eight years.”

Nash is survived by her children and grandchildren. A funeral service for her was held on Dec. 9 at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

For more info, go to JTA.org.  

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Anthony Geary, whose portrayal of Luke Spencer helped define General Hospital and daytime television,” ABC said in a statement confirming his death.

Geary died Sunday in Amsterdam of complications from a surgical procedure three days prior.

“The entire ‘General Hospital’ family is heartbroken over the news of Tony Geary’s passing,” Frank Valentini, executive producer of the ABC show, said in a statement Monday. “Tony was a brilliant actor and set the bar that we continue to strive for.”

In a career spanning more than 40 years, Geary earned eight Daytime Emmy awards as Luke Spencer after joining the soap in 1978. Luke’s pairing with Genie Francis’ Laura Webber Baldwin (as she was known at the time) propelled the two onto magazine covers and into the cultural mainstream.

The 1981 wedding of Luke and Laura was a pop culture phenom done in two parts, drawing guest appearances that included Elizabeth Taylor. A record 30 million viewers watched.

“He was a powerhouse as an actor. Shoulder to shoulder with the greats. No star burned brighter than Tony Geary. He was one of a kind. As an artist, he was filled with a passion for the truth, no matter how blunt, or even a little rude it might be, but always hilariously funny,” Francis said in a statement.

In addition to his role as Luke, Geary had numerous TV and stage credits, including stints on other soaps: “The Young and the Restless” and “Bright Promise.” Geary played Luke on and off until 2015, though he returned for a cameo in 2017.

He lived a quiet life with husband Claudio Gama in Amsterdam.

In a 1993 interview, Geary spoke of the many highs and lows of playing Luke.

“I felt like I had to be Luke 24 hours a day or people would be disappointed,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, they are mythic creatures. They come from two sides of the universe together and have a mutual connection, which is basically lust and appreciation for individuality. They love the eccentricity in each other.”

Geary’s Luke began as a small-time hitman recruited to dismantle the relationship of Laura and her first husband, Scotty Baldwin. Their story arc turned darker when Luke sexually assaulted Laura. The assault led to a redemption trail for Luke, who evolved into a hero and even served as mayor of the show’s small town, Port Charles.

“He was not created to be a heroic character,” Geary told ABC’s “Nightline” in 2015. “He was created to be an anti-hero, and I have treasured the anti-side of the hero and pushed it for a long time. … He’s not a white hat or a black hat, he’s all shades of grey. And that has been the saving grace of playing him all these years.”

Geary was born to Mormon parents in Coalville, Utah. He was discovered while attending the University of Utah and performing on stage. He joined a touring company of “The Subject was Roses,” which brought him to Los Angeles.

Over the years, he appeared frequently in stage productions alongside his screen work.

Geary’s first appearance on TV was as Tom Whalom on an episode of “Room 222.” He went on to appear in “All in the Family,” “The Partridge Family,” “The Mod Squad,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” “The Streets of San Francisco” and “Barnaby Jones.”

Rob Reiner, the son of a comedy giant who became one himself as one of the preeminent filmmakers of his generation with movies such as “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally …” and “This Is Spinal Tap,” has died. He was 78.

Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found fatally stabbed Sunday at their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Police Department on Monday arrested the Reiners’ 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, and booked him on suspicion of killing his parents.

It was a tragic, shocking end to a life and career that began with a complicated father-son relationship. Reiner grew up thinking his father, the legendary funnyman Carl Reiner, didn’t understand him or find him funny. But the younger Reiner would in many ways follow in his father’s footsteps, working both in front and behind the camera, in comedies that stretched from broad sketch work to accomplished dramedies.

“My father thought, ‘Oh, my God, this poor kid is worried about being in the shadow of a famous father,’” Reiner told “60 Minutes” in October, recalling the temptation to change his name. “And he says, ‘What do you want to change your name to?’ And I said, ‘Carl.’ I just wanted to be like him.”

After starting out as a writer for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” Reiner’s breakthrough came when he was, at age 23, cast in Norman Lear’s “All in the Family” as Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivic. But by the 1980s, Reiner began as a feature film director, churning out some of the most beloved films of that, or any, era. His first film, the largely improvised 1984 cult classic “This Is Spinal Tap,” remains the quintessential mockumentary.

After the 1985 John Cusack summer comedy, “The Sure Thing,” Reiner made “Stand By Me” (1986), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and “When Harry Met Sally …” (1989), a four-year stretch that resulted in a trio of American classics, all of them among the most often quoted movies of the 20th century.

A legacy on and off screen

For the next four decades, Reiner, a warm and gregarious presence on screen and an outspoken liberal advocate off it, remained a constant fixture in Hollywood. The production company he co-founded, Castle Rock Entertainment, launched an enviable string of hits, including “Seinfeld” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” By the turn of the century, its success rate had fallen considerably, but Reiner revived it, and this fall released the long-in-coming sequel “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”

All the while, Reiner was one of the film industry’s most passionate Democrat activists, regularly hosting fundraisers and campaigning for liberal issues. He was co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged in court California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. He also chaired the campaign for Prop 10, a California initiative to fund early childhood development services with a tax on tobacco products. And Reiner was an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump.

“Beneath all of the stories he produced was a deep belief in the goodness of people — and a lifelong commitment to putting that belief into action,” former President Barack Obama said in a statement.

Political engagement ran in the family, too. Reiner’s father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism in the 1950s and his mother, Estelle Reiner, a singer and actor, protested the Vietnam War.

“If you’re a nepo baby, doors will open,” Reiner told the Guardian in 2024. “But you have to deliver. If you don’t deliver, the door will close just as fast as it opened.”

‘All in the Family’ to ‘Stand By Me’

Robert Reiner was born in the Bronx on March 6, 1947. As a young man, he quickly set out to follow his father into entertainment. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles film school and, in the 1960s, began appearing in small parts in various television shows.

But when Lear saw Reiner as a key cast member in “All in the Family,” it came as a surprise to the elder Reiner.

“Norman says to my dad, ‘You know, this kid is really funny.’ And I think my dad said, ‘What? That kid? That kid? He’s sullen. He sits quiet. He doesn’t, you know, he’s not funny.’ He didn’t think I was anyway,” Reiner told “60 Minutes.”

On “All in the Family,” Reiner served as a pivotal foil to Carroll O’Connor’s bigoted, conservative Archie Bunker. Reiner was seven times nominated for an Emmy for his performance on the show, winning in 1974 and 1978. In Lear, Reiner also found a mentor. He called him “a second father.”

“It wasn’t just that he hired me for ‘All in the Family,’” Reiner told “American Masters” in 2005. “It was that I saw, in how he conducted his life, that there was room to be an activist as well. That you could use your celebrity, your good fortune, to help make some change.”

Lear also helped launch Reiner as a filmmaker. He put $7.5 million of his own money to help finance “Stand By Me,” Reiner’s adaptation of the Stephen King novella “The Body.” The movie, about four boys who go looking for the dead body of a missing boy, became a coming-of-age classic, made breakthroughs of its young cast (particularly River Phoenix) and even earned the praise of King.

“Rest in peace, Rob,” King said Monday on X. “You always stood by me.”

With his stock rising, Reiner devoted himself to adapting William Goldman’s 1973’s “The Princess Bride,” a book Reiner had loved since his father gave him a copy as a gift. Everyone from François Truffaut to Robert Redford had considered adapting Goldman’s book. It ultimately fell to Reiner (from Goldman’s own script) to capture the unique comic tone of “The Princess Bride.” But only once he had Goldman’s blessing.

“At the door he greeted me and he said, ‘This is my baby. I want this on my tombstone. This is my favorite thing I’ve ever written in my life. What are you going to do with it?’” Reiner recalled in a Television Academy interview. “And we sat down with him and started going through what I thought should be done with the film.”

Though only a modest success in theaters, the movie — starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant and Robin Wright — would grow in stature over the years, leading to countless impressions of Inigo Montoya’s vow of revenge and the risky nature of land wars in Asia.

‘When Harry Met Sally …”

Reiner was married to Penny Marshall, the actor and filmmaker, for 10 years beginning in 1971. Like Reiner, Marshall experienced sitcom fame, with “Laverne & Shirley,” but found a more lasting legacy behind the camera.

After their divorce, Reiner, at a lunch with Nora Ephron, suggested a comedy about dating. In writing what became “When Harry Met Sally …” Ephron and Reiner charted a relationship between a man and a woman (played in the film by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan) over the course of 12 years.

Along the way, the movie’s ending changed, as did some of the film’s indelible moments. The famous line, “I’ll have what she’s having,” said after witnessing Ryan’s fake orgasm at Katz’s Delicatessen, was a suggestion by Crystal — delivered by none other than Reiner’s mother, Estelle.

The movie’s happy ending also had some real-life basis. Reiner met Michele Singer, a photographer, on the set of “When Harry Met Sally …” In 1989, they were wed. They had three children together: Nick, Jake and Romy.

Reiner’s subsequent films included another King adaptation, “Misery” (1990) and a pair of Aaron Sorkin-penned dramas: the military courtroom tale “A Few Good Men” (1992) and 1995’s “The American President.”

By the late ’90s, Reiner’s films (1996’s “Ghosts of Mississippi,” 2007’s “The Bucket List”) no longer had the same success rate. But he remained a frequent actor, often memorably enlivening films like “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) and “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). In 2023, he directed the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.”

In an interview earlier this year with Seth Rogen, Reiner suggested everything in his career boiled down to one thing.

“All I’ve ever done is say, ‘Is this something that is an extension of me?’ For ‘Stand by Me,’ I didn’t know if it was going to be successful or not. All I thought was, ‘I like this because I know what it feels like.’”

LONDON (AP) — Sophie Kinsella, the author of “Confessions of a Shopaholic” and a series of millions-selling rom-com sequels, died Wednesday, her family said. She was 55 and had been diagnosed with brain cancer.

The family said in a statement on Kinsella’s Instagram account: “We are heartbroken to announce the passing this morning of our beloved Sophie (aka Maddy, aka Mummy). She died peacefully, with her final days filled with her true loves: family and music and warmth and Christmas and joy.

“We can’t imagine what life will be like without her radiance and love of life.”

Kinsella, who also published under her real name, Madeleine Wickham, announced in April 2024 that she had been diagnosed in late 2022 with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.

“I did not share this before because I wanted to make sure that my children were able to hear and process the news in privacy and adapt to our ’new normal,’” she said at the time.

Starting in 2000 with “The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic,” titled “Confessions of a Shopaholic” in the United States, Kinsella published 10 “Shopaholic” novels, along with other fiction. Her books have sold more than 45 million copies worldwide and have been translated into dozens of languages.

The first two “Shopaholic” books were adapted into the 2009 film “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” starring Isla Fisher and Hugh Dancy.

From journalism to fiction

Kinsella did not grow up intending to be a writer. One of three girls born to teachers in London, she played piano and violin as a child and also composed music.

She told author-publisher Zibby Owens on her podcast, “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books,” that the idea of writing never crossed her mind. “It wasn’t my childhood ambition. I wasn’t the child walking around saying, ‘I’m going to write a novel one day.’”

Kinsella enrolled at Oxford University to study music but switched to the politics, philosophy and economics program after one year.

While at college, she met local musician Henry Wickham and fell in love. The couple had four sons and a daughter.

After graduating, Kinsella began working as a financial journalist and spent her commute reading. The idea to write fiction herself began to take shape on the train.

She published her debut novel, ”The Tennis Party,” in 1995 when she was 24, as Madeleine Wickham. Soon after, she left her journalism job to focus on writing. Six other books, including “The Gatecrasher” and “Sleeping Arrangements,” followed.

‘Shopaholic’ success

An otherwise normal shopping excursion sparked the idea for writing her first “Shopaholic” novel

“I remember looking around me and thinking… “We all shop… We talk about it. We do it. We rejoice in it. We make bad decisions. Why hasn’t anybody written about this?” Kinsella said in 2019 on “The Sunday Salon with Alice-Azania Jarvis” podcast.

Kinsella created a story about Becy Bloomwood, a 20-something financial journalist in debt from a shopping habit she can’t (or won’t) kick. The novel contained hilarious back-and-forth correspondence with bill collectors and banks, where she would make excuses for late payments.

Kinsella told The Associated Press in an interview that the letters were “one of the most fun bits of writing.”

There was also a love story with a handsome businessman whom Becky met while on assignment and went on to marry him and have a mini-shopaholic daughter in future books.

“Confessions of a Shopaholic” had a different tone and style than her earlier books, so she decided to submit it to her publishers under the pen name Sophie Kinsella. Her middle name was Sophie and Kinsella was her mother’s maiden name.

The publishers said yes, and “Shopaholic” was published in 2000 under her pseudonym. The novel, blending humor with a cautionary tale about getting in over your head with debt, was an immediate success.

“Becky was kind of like a pioneer in realizing that all this easy credit can lead to problems,” Kinsella told The AP.

Kinsella also wrote “The Undomestic Goddess”, “Remember Me?” and “Twenties Girl.” A young adult novel, “Finding Audrey,” was released in 2015, followed by the children’s book series “My Mummy Fairy and Me.”

Her novel “Can You Keep a Secret?” was adapted into a film starring Alexandra Daddario and Tyler Hoechlin in 2019. Her last novel was “The Burnout,” released in 2023.

Illness and hope

In November 2022, after experiencing symptoms like memory loss, headaches and balance troubles, Kinsella was diagnosed with glioblastoma, for which there is no cure. She kept the news private until April 2024. In an interview with TV personality Robin Roberts aired a few months later, Kinsella said she was focused on living in the moment.

“I’ve already lasted more than the average. That’s how we get through. We hope,” she said.

After her diagnosis, she wrote a novella, “What Does It Feel Like,” about a woman with five children who has brain cancer.

“I thought people might be curious to know what it’s like to go through this,” Kinsella told Roberts. “I hope it’s full of optimism and love most of all.”

___

Rancilio reported from Detroit.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a British-born zoologist and conservationist who dedicated much of his life to protecting elephants, has died, his Save the Elephants group said Tuesday. He was 83.

Douglas-Hamilton was known for decades of conservation work, which included pioneering trackers and collaring to protect elephants against poaching and the illegal ivory trade. He died on Monday in Kenya, the statement said.

Save the Elephants said he was “instrumental in exposing the ivory poaching crisis” and documenting the destruction of over half of Africa’s elephants in a single decade, “leading up to a crucial intergovernmental decision to ban the international trade in ivory in 1989.”

“Whether sitting quietly among elephants, poring over maps of their movements, or circling above a herd in his beloved aircraft, that glint in his eye was there,” the group’s CEO Frank Pope said.

“He never lost his lifelong curiosity about what was happening inside the minds of one of our planet’s most intriguing creatures,” Pope added.

Elephants use their ivory tusks — the elongated teeth on either side of an elephant’s mouth — for gathering food, digging and self-defense. But people have used ivory throughout history, including for weapons, jewelry, ornamentation and traditional medicinal purposes.

The Uganda Conservation Foundation eulogized Douglas-Hamilton as someone who “generously shared his knowledge and expertise with the conservation community, inspiring action and collaboration.”

“We honor a life that didn’t just protect elephants, but empowered the people protecting them,” the foundation said.

Douglas-Hamilton’s research was considered by many to be essential in the push to ban the international trade of ivory. But despite being outlawed in 1989 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, ivory demand continued driving African elephants towards extinction, and Douglas-Hamilton’s advocacy played a role in shuttering domestic markets in an array of countries in the 2010s.

During the 2010s, the Chinese government also took steps to halt ivory trade, including shutting down factories and retail outlets.

“With the end of the legal ivory trade in China, the survival chances for elephants have distinctly improved,” Douglas-Hamilton said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2017. “We must give credit to China for having done the right thing by closing the ivory trade.”

“There is still a long way to go to end the excessive killing of elephants for ivory, but there is now greater hope for the species,” Douglas-Hamilton said at the time.

Wildlife Conservation Network, which has Save the Elephants as a founding partner, said in a statement Tuesday that Douglas-Hamilton was a “giant in the field of conservation” and worked tirelessly to protect elephants.

“Iain was a pioneer and an icon. He was deeply respected, loved, and admired, and will be missed beyond words,” the network said.

Drought-related hunger can also be a cause of elephant fatalities. In 2009, Kenya experienced its worst drought in 12 years that created hazardous conditions and led to more than 100 elephant deaths.

“When (elephants) do not have enough food they also seem to be vulnerable to disease, their immune system weakens and they catch all sorts of diseases,” Douglas-Hamilton told the AP in 2009.

He was a close and longtime friend of famed primatologist Jane Goodall, who died in October at the age of 91.

Douglas-Hamilton is survived by his wife, Oria, their two daughters and six grandchildren.

O’Malley reported from Philadelphia.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

NEW YORK (AP) — Raul Malo, the soulful tenor and frontman of the genre-defying, Grammy-winning band The Mavericks, has died. He was 60.

Malo died Monday night, his wife, Betty Malo, posted on his Facebook page. He had been battling cancer. The frontman of The Mavericks had documented his health journey on social media since he disclosed in June 2024 that he was receiving treatment for colon cancer.

In September 2025, Malo said on Instagram that he was battling LMD, or leptomeningeal disease, a rare complication when cancer spreads to membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord.

The diagnosis forced The Mavericks to cancel dates with Dwight Yoakam in the middle of a joint tour. Malo left home in Nashville, Tennessee, to seek treatment in Houston, keeping his fans updated along his health journey.

“He was called to do another gig — this time in the sky — and he’s flying high like an eagle,” Betty Malo wrote. “No one embodied life and love, joy and passion, family, friends, music, and adventure the way our beloved Raul did. Now he will look down on us with all that heaven will allow, lighting the way and reminding us to savor every moment.”

Malo’s band praised his deep commitment to the “preservation of the multilingual American musical repertoire” and his steadfast championing of “music education as an inspiration for every child across America and throughout the world.”

Born Raul Francisco Martínez-Malo Jr. in Miami to Cuban parents, he co-founded The Mavericks in 1989 with drummer Paul Deakin and bass guitarist Robert Reynolds. Their self-titled debut album was released the following year on the independent, Miami-based label Y&T Music.

Some call the band alt-country. Others describe it as Americana, roots, Latin, Tejano or swing. It’s all of the above and more, driven by songs written by Malo, his expansive guitar style and his broad vocal range, from a soaring, velvety baritone to operatic high notes.

His musical prowess was in the blend, also incorporating rock, traditional country and surf. In the early days in Miami, The Mavericks played punk and rock clubs to get their sound out there.

“I grew up in a household where we listened to all kinds of music,” Malo said in a 2020 NPR interview. “I just remember it was a celebration of all these cultures.”

At that time, The Mavericks had just released an all-Spanish album, “En Español,” featuring original songs and classic Latin American standards. In 2002, Malo released an all-Spanish album for children, “el Cancionero de la Familia Volume 1,” featuring vocals from his sister, Carol, wife, Betty, and mother, Norma, along with other guests.

The band has taken on various iterations over the years as some members came and went. The Mavericks also disbanded a couple of times. Malo put out a dozen or so solo albums and collaboration projects as well, including his instrumental “Say Less,” “You’re Only Lonely” and “Sinners & Saints.”

The Mavericks released their 13th studio album, “Moon & Stars,” in 2024. Between that and their debut, the band received a Grammy, two Country Music Association awards and three Academy of Country Music Awards.

Raul has a BMI award for songwriting, for “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down,” and was nominated for several solo Grammys, including one for his album “Lucky One” and another for his work with the Latin supergroup “Los Super Seven.”

He is survived by his wife of 34 years, Betty; sons Dino, Victor, and Max, mother Norma, sister Carol, and Mavericks bandmates Paul Deakin, Eddie Perez, and Jerry Dale McFadden.

Her death was announced recently on social media by Soloway’s children, Joey and Faith, who wrote she passed from natural causes.

“She was very humble in terms of publicity, she wasn’t interested in it,” Joey Soloway, the creator of “Transparent,” wrote in a statement announcing Carrie’s death. “She loved the show and us and the character, but sometimes she wasn’t in the mood to be everyone’s favorite trailblazer.”

“Transparent”  followed the lives of the Pfeffermans, a Jewish family in Los Angeles, whose world shifts when the parent they’ve always known as Mort comes out as a transgender woman named Maura.

Since the show’s 2014 premiere, Carrie became a “reluctant icon” to the trans community, in her family’s words. She visited the White House under then-President Barack Obama and became friends with trans elected officials, while “Transparent” blazed a path for modern LGBTQ Jews exploring their identity.

Born in London in 1937, Carrie Soloway and her family survived Nazi bombing raids during World War II. In the 1950s the family settled in Chicago, where Carrie — then living as Harry — pursued a career in psychiatry, also serving for a time as an anesthesiologist at a U.S. Army base in Massachusetts. She was married to Elaine Soloway, an author, for 30 years.

Carrie came out as a woman to her children in 2012, at the age of 70. Two years later, “Transparent” debuted on Amazon Prime, inspired both by her life and the reactions of her family to the news, and starring Jewish actor Jeffrey Tambor as Carrie’s stand-in, Maura Pfefferman.

Four seasons of the show were produced, along with a two-hour finale movie. Joey Soloway, the show’s creator, themselves came out as nonbinary over the course of its run — mirroring the journey of one of the fictional Pfefferman children. In 2023, Faith Soloway — who was a writer, producer and occasional actor in the original series — revived the show as a stage musical.

Over the course of its run, “Transparent” was showered with awards and celebrated not only for its treatment of trans narratives, but also for its deeply rooted depiction of Jewish identity and ritual. The show traced the Pfefferman family roots back to Weimar-era Berlin and took them to Israel; a rabbi was a central character, and plotlines centered on Jewish rites of passage.

“‘Transparent’ is the most important show of my Jewish adulthood,” Matt Green, a rabbi at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim who is gay, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It was a rare TV show that got right every aspect of the Judaism it was presenting.” He noted a scene at the show’s outset, in which Maura lights the Shabbat candles — “so rich in that candle lighting is so traditionally female.”

The show was not without controversy, particularly over the casting of Tambor, a cisgender man, to play Maura. Following allegations of sexual harassment, Tambor was fired from the show and his character killed off for the finale, a musical that ended with the controversial number “Joyocaust.” The stage musical version, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2023 and whose creators have said they intend for Broadway, recasts the story to more heavily represent trans and non-binary actors.

Carrie Soloway, meanwhile, continued her psychiatry profession and debated coming out of retirement. At the time of her death, she was working on a book about her profession titled “I’m Sorry, but We’re Out Of Time.”

“Rest in power, Moppa,” Faith Soloway wrote on Instagram, using a term of endearment for Carrie the siblings had worked into “Transparent.” “We love you forever.”

For more info, go to JTA.org.