NOTEWORTHY DEATHS

Florida legislator spent 26 years in D.C.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Former U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, who spent 26 years in Washington battling over issues such as free trade, Everglades restoration and welfare, has died after a lengthy battle with lung cancer.

Shaw’s family said in a statement that he died Tuesday at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale. He was 74.

The veteran Republican rode into office with President Ronald Reagan in 1980 and survived spirited challenges to his seat over three decades only to lose to a Democratic wave in 2006. He campaigned that year to keep his job months after he had a tumor removed from his lung.

One of Shaw’s signature moments was his role in sponsoring and helping shepherd in1996 a contentious bill backed by then-President Bill Clinton to overhaul the nation’s safety net known as welfare. Shaw’s political career was derailed a decade later by attacks by his Democratic opponent over Medicare, the federal health-care program for the elderly.

During his lengthy career in Congress, Shaw also led an effort to eliminate Social Security earning penalties for working senior citizens, and he pushed through federal legislation to help restore the Everglades.

Shaw was born in Miami and earned degrees, including a law degree, from Stetson University while also earning a master’s in business administration from the University of Alabama. He was elected mayor of Fort Lauderdale in 1975.

Noted, prolific documentary filmmaker

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES - Saul Landau, a prolific, award-winning documentary filmmaker who traveled the world profiling political leaders like Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Chile’s Salvador Allende and used his camera to draw attention to war, poverty and racism, has died. He was 77.

Landau, who had been battling bladder cancer for two years, died Monday night at his home in Alameda, Calif., with his children and grandchildren, said colleague John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, where Landau had worked for many years.

The director, producer and writer of more than 40 documentaries had continued to work almost until his death. He regularly submitted essays to the Huffington Post and elsewhere, sometimes writing from his hospital bed, according to his son, Greg. He was also working on a documentary on homophobia in Cuba.

His most acclaimed documentary was likely 1979’s Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang, which examined the effects of radiation exposure to people living downwind from Nevada’s above-ground nuclear-bomb tests in the 1950s. The film received a George Polk Award for investigative reporting and other honors.

His 1968 documentary Fidel gave U.S. audiences one of their earliest close-ups of the revolutionary leader who installed communism in Cuba.

In 1971, Landau and fellow filmmaker Haskell Wexler traveled to Chile for a rare U.S. interview with Allende, who had just been elected his country’s president and who died two years later in a military coup.

Arkansas, Pages 10 on 09/12/2013

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