PARIS, Oct 14, 2007 (AFP) - France's best-known mercenary Bob Denard, who played a part in numerous African wars and coups d'etat from the 1960s, died Saturday at the age of 78, his family said. He had been suffering from Alzhaeimer's disease.

Denard, whose real name was Gilbert Bourgeaud, became famous as a soldier for hire in a succession of post-colonial war theatres, including Congo, Angola and Nigeria, as well as Iran and Yemen.

PARIS, Oct 14, 2007 (AFP) - France's best-known mercenary Bob Denard, who played a part in a series of African wars and coups d'etat from the 1960s, has died at the age of 78, his family said Sunday.

Denard, whose real name was Gilbert Bourgeaud, had been suffering from Alzheimer's diserase. He died Saturday.

After serving in the French armed forces, Denard began his career as a mercenary in the former Belgian Congo. He went on to fight in Angola, Benin, Nigeria, Gabon and Zimbabwe, as well as Iran and Yemen.

PARIS, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - Veteran French journalist Bernard Morrot, who edited the France Soir newspaper and the Marianne weekly, died Tuesday at the age of 70 following a long illness, his family said.

Born on October 28, 1936 in Paris, Morrot started his journalistic career at Paris-Presse in 1957. He went on to work at several other newspapers before heading France Soir between 1992 and 1997.

KUWAIT CITY, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Former Kuwaiti defence minister and senior member of the Al-Sabah ruling family Sheikh Salem Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah died on Monday after a long illness, the Amiri court announced. He was 69.

The elder son of former emir Sheikh Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah, who ruled the oil-rich emirate between 1965 and 1977, Sheikh Salem graduated in law from Britain.

He served as Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, Britain and several other countries before he took his first ministerial job in 1975 as minister of social affairs and labour.

ROME, Oct 2, 2007 (AFP) - Andrea Dotti, the second husband of British actress Audrey Hepburn, has died aged 69, the ANSA news agency reported on Tuesday.

About 10 years her junior, Dotti, an Italian neuro-psychiatrist and professor at the University of Rome, married Hepburn when she was just shy of 40 and fathered her second son Luca.

Dotti made no secret of his infidelity, often appearing in the Italian press with one of his lovers on his arm, but the marriage lasted 13 years before ending in divorce.

JERUSALEM, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - A former Ashkenazi grand rabbi of Israel, Avraham Shapira, considered to be the spiritual mentor of the Jewish settlement movement, died in Jerusalem on Thursday at the age of 96, relatives said.

Born in the Holy City in 1917, Shapira was one of a long line of celebrated ultra-orthodox rabbis from his family there over the course of six decades.

He held the position of grand rabbi from 1982 to 1993. He was also director of Yeshiva Merkaz Harav, a talmudic school that was a centre of religious Zionism.

OTTAWA, Sept 8, 2007 (AFP) - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Saturday offered his condolences following the death of his St. Lucian counterpart, Sir John Compton, who died overnight at the age of 82.

'Sir John led his country to independence and had a major impact on all of the Caribbean. He was a leader in promoting cooperation throughout the region and in the Commonwealth and was instrumental in establishing key Caribbean institutions,' Harper said in a statement.

WASHINGTON, Sept 8, 2007 (AFP) - Sir John Compton, St Lucia's prime minister who also was first to lead the island nation when it became independent from Britain in 1979, has died, the government announced Saturday.

Compton, 82, who had reportedly suffered a series of strokes in the past year, passed away late Friday at the Tapion Hospital in Castries after falling ill on September 1, acting Prime Minister Stephenson King said in a statement on the official government website.

CHICAGO, Sept 6, 2007 (AFP) - Miyoshi Umeki, the first Asian to win an Academy Award for her role in the 1957 romantic drama Sayonara, has died of cancer, her son said Thursday. She was 78.

Umeki began her career as a nightclub singer in Japan and recorded several hit albums with RCA under the moniker Nancy Umeki.

She moved to the United States in the mid 1950's where she landed a spot on the musical variety show 'Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts.'

NEW YORK, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) - Brooke Astor, once the toast of New York high society and among America's most generous benefactors, died Monday at the age of 105, US media reported.

Astor reportedly lavished 200 million dollars of her personal fortune on charitable causes, especially those dedicated to her beloved New York City, including the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Botanical Garden.

PARIS, July 30, 2007 (AFP) - A former AFP journalist who notably covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pierre Le Gall, had died aged 76 following an operation, his family said Monday.

He is to be buried August 2 in northern Paris.

Le Gall was a Russian-speaker who worked many years as a Moscow-based correspondent in the 1970s, and also headed AFP's Belgrade bureau at one point. While in Moscow, he cultivated friendships with many members of the dissident community, including Andrei Sakarov.