Kim Shin-jo, the only captured member of a team of 31 North Korean commandos who came within striking distance of the South Korean presidential palace in central Seoul before they were repelled in 1968, died on Wednesday. He was 82. Mr. Kim’s death at a nursing hospital was confirmed on Thursday by his Sungrak Church…
Amadou Bagayoko, a Malian guitarist and composer who with his wife, the singer Mariam Doumbia, formed Amadou & Mariam, inventing a broadly accessible sound that made fans of people worldwide who otherwise knew little about music from Africa, died on Friday in Bamako, Mali’s capital. He was 70. His death was announced by the Malian…
Charlotte Webb, who as a young woman helped code breakers decipher enemy signals at Britain’s top-secret Bletchley Park, died on Monday. She was 101. Her death was confirmed by the Women’s Royal Army Corps Association and by the Bletchley Park Trust. Ms. Webb, known as Betty, was 18 when she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service,…
Gananath Obeyesekere, an anthropologist whose long career and wide-ranging social insights — which drew on Hindu texts, Freudian psychoanalysis and Christian mysticism, among many other ideas — made him a leading intellectual figure in both his native Sri Lanka and the rarefied world of Western academia, died on Tuesday at his home in Colombo, Sri…
Gai Gherardi, a Los Angeles optician who with a partner attracted a celebrity clientele by pioneering the notion that eyeglass frames did not have to be dull but rather could be fashion statements of individuality, died on March 16 at her home in Hollywood. She was 78. Her sister, Heather Gherardi, said the cause was…
Oleg Gordievsky, who was the top K.G.B. agent in London until he defected to the West in 1985 and revealed himself as a longtime double agent for British intelligence — making him one of the most highly placed Western spies during the Cold War — was found dead at his home in Godalming, southwest of…
Addressing the British House of Commons in August 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the pilots of the Royal Air Force who were staving off an impending German invasion of the British Isles in what would be known as the Battle of Britain. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much…
Émilie Dequenne, who won best actress honors at age 17 at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in the Belgian film “Rosetta,” died on Sunday in Villejuif, France. She was 43. Her death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Marie-Laure Calmette, an assistant to Ms. Dequenne’s longtime agent, Danielle Gain. Ms. Dequenne had been…
Lee Shau-kee, a Hong Kong real estate tycoon who made his immense fortune building tens of thousands of apartments for middle-class descendants of refugees who had fled Communist mainland China, died on Monday. He was 97. His death was announced by the company he founded, Henderson Land Development. It did not say where he died…
Roy L. Prosterman, a lawyer who left a lucrative corporate law practice to champion land reform in the underdeveloped world, died on Feb. 27 at his home in Seattle. He was 89. His death was announced by the Seattle land-rights institute Landesa, of which he was a founder. The organization did not specify a cause….