Rising folk star Taylor Mitchell killed by coyotes

By staff writers

news.com.au

October 29, 2009 08:04am

A PROMISING young Canadian musician has been attacked and killed by coyotes while on a tour promoting her new album.

Taylor Mitchell, 19, was considered a rising star of the folk music scene, having just earned a Canadian Folk Music Awards nomination.

She was hiking alone on the Syline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park when a pair of coyotes attacked her.

Tourists rushed to her aid when they heard her screams and found Mitchell bleeding heavily from mulitple wounds "all over her body", according to The Canadian Press.

"She was losing a considerable amount of blood from her wounds," paramedic Paul Maynard told TCP.

One of the animals was later shot by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but the other got away.

Park officials said it was highly unusual for coyotes to be involved in such an aggressive attack.

Mitchell was due to play at a concert after her hike and was on her first tour of the Candaian east coast.

Were the coyotes riding a giant rocket?

French anthropologist Levi-Strauss dead at 100
November 4, 2009 - 7:11AM

French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, whose work deeply influenced Western thinking about civilisation, has died at the age of 100, his publisher Plon said on Tuesday.

Levi-Strauss died overnight Saturday to Sunday, according to fellow academics at the school of social sciences.

Trained as a philosopher, Levi-Strauss shot to prominence with his 1955 book Tristes Tropiques, a haunting account of his travels and studies in the Amazon basin that is considered one of the 20th century's major works.

He was a leading proponent of structuralism, which sought to uncover the hidden, unconscious or primitive patterns of thought believed to determine the outer reality of human culture and relationships.

Structuralism was also, Levi-Strauss liked to say, "the search for unsuspected harmonies."

He had celebrated his 100th birthday on November 28 last year.

French academia and the cultural elite had mobilised to pay homage to Levi-Strauss with a program of films, lectures and reflection on his contribution to modern thinking.

Among the more striking conclusions of his work was the idea that there is no fundamental difference between the belief systems and myths of so-called "primitive" races and those of modern western societies.

French anthropologist Levi-Strauss dead at 100

Russian spy-turned-tycoon gunned down
SERGEI LOIKO, MOSCOW
November 4, 2009

A RUSSIAN tycoon who organised a Michael Jackson concert in Moscow, was once jailed for spying in Israel and hired US women basketball stars to compete in his homeland has been slain by gunmen.

Shabtai von Kalmanovic was killed near Moscow's Novodevichy monastery on Monday when assailants in a Lada sedan pulled beside his black Mercedes-Benz and opened fire, the Vesti television news program reported. Mr Kalmanovic died instantly. His driver was injured.

''Submachine-guns and shotguns were used in the attack,'' Moscow prosecutor's office investigator Anatoly Bagmet said.

''The car was in motion when shots were fired.''

The attackers fired at least 20 rounds at the businessman's car, a police source said.

Mr Kalmanovic, 61, had invested millions of dollars into the Spartak, a women's professional basketball team that won the EuroLeague Women title the past three seasons. He hired stars of the Women's National Basketball Association to play during the American league's off-season, paying them as much as 10 times their US salary.

During the 1990s, Mr Kalmanovic organised tours to Russia of such artists as Jackson, Liza Minnelli and Jose Carreras.

Born in Lithuania during Soviet rule, Mr Kalmanovic emigrated to Israel during the early 1970s. He was arrested in 1986, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and served nearly six years in an Israeli prison.

He returned to Russia after his release and went into the construction business.

Adolf Shayevich, the chief rabbi of Russia and an acquaintance of Mr Kalmanovic, said the tycoon ''was a remarkable person and an active member of the Jewish community''.

AP

Sheldon Dorf, the founder of Comic-Con, an annual comic book, science fiction and fantasy festival held in San Diego, died of complications related to diabetes Wednesday. Dorf, who was 76, was also a freelance writer and a letterist, but was best known for founding the convention -- the largest such event in the Western Hemisphere, bested only by France's Angoulême International Comics Festival.

Spanning four days and attracting tens of thousands of attendees, Comic-Con was the second festival that Dorf created. When he was living in Michigan, he mounted the "Detroit Triple Fan Fair," a local gathering for comic book fans. The DTFF continued after Dorf left for California, but it never reached the level of pop-culture relevance attained by Comic-Con.

At the time that Dorf stepped into the scene, comic books, science fiction and horror were located on the outer edges of popular culture, and were largely perceived as the province of adolescent boys. Still, as Dorf's first Comic-Con event showed, there was a groundswell for the genre. While the original 300 attendees pale beside this year's massive 125,000-person turnout, it was impressive for what was, at the time, a regional event.

As Comic-Con's numbers continued to expand over the years, so did its focus. At the 1970 Comic-Con, the featured speakers included horror film fanatic Forrest J. Ackerman, authors Ray Bradbury and A.E. Van Vogt, and comic book artist Jack Kirby -- a group that demonstrated the fairly narrow boundaries of the convention's world at the time. But, as fantasy, science fiction, and comic books started to embrace a wider universe of perspectives, Comic-Con's speaker lineup expanded, too. In recent years, underground artists like Kim Dietch and Howard Chaykin have joined lesbian icon Alison Bechdel, postmodern noir writer Warren Ellis and dozens of other niche luminaries on the convention's guest list.

Comic-Con's growth has also reflected a change in the world of speculative fiction and comic books. After all, 1970 was a year after the airing of the last episode of Star Trek and seven years before the release of Star Wars. In terms of comics, it was eight years before the release of the first graphic novel and decades before the first comic book film that was really aimed at adults. It would be excessive to credit Dorf with the gritty, mature perspective of A History of Violence or The Dark Knight, but Comic-Con has certainly had a lot to do with the rising profile -- and potential -- of the genre. As a crucible for fans, writers, artists, and filmmakers, it has launched careers, inspired artists and helped expand the boundaries of comic books and speculative fiction.

Dorf stopped attending Comic-Con in 2001, as his vision of the event increasingly conflicted with that of its other organizers. However, his creation continues on, inspiring fresh generations of fans and artists.

WADF, that is sad about Norton Buffalo. Saw him perform many times with Steve Miller.

Drummer Jerry Fuchs has been killed in a freak accident in which he plunged to his death in an elevator shaft.


The 34-year-old musician was attending a fundraiser in Brooklyn, New York to benefit The Uniform Project, which raises money for children living in India's slum neighbourhoods.

He was travelling in a freight elevator with an unnamed male guest when it stopped a few feet above the fifth floor.

Fuchs and the other man opened the door and attempted to jump out, but while the other man landed safely, the star's clothing got caught and he fell five stories.

The rocker, who played for the indie rock bands !!!, Juan MacLean and, most recently, Maserati, was found by his friends and later died at New York's Bellevue hospital.

His friend, Alex Frankel, tells the New York Post, "We found him in the elevator shaft. He was no longer able to speak."

Fuchs' mother, Joy, paid tribute to her son, adding: "He touched lives. His gift for music touched many lives."