Marvelous Marvin Hagler -- former middleweight champion and one of the greatest boxers who ever lived -- has died ... this according to his wife.
A post with the sad news went up Saturday on Hagler's official fan club page on Facebook, reading ... "I am sorry to make a very sad announcement. Today unfortunately my beloved husband Marvelous Marvin passed away unexpectedly at his home here in New Hampshire. Our family requests that you respect our privacy during this difficult time."
The note was signed by his wife, Kay. The exact circumstances of his death weren't released.
Hagler has gone down in history as a boxing great, & perhaps one of the best -- if not THE best -- middleweight fighters to step in the ring. He held the title as the undisputed middleweight champion of the world from 1980 to 1987 ... an incredible run.
He got his first title shot in '79 against Vito Antuofermo -- which got called a draw, despite many feeling Hagler had taken it. He got a 2nd shot at the title the following year ... this time against Alan Minter -- whom Hagler pounded into a 3rd round stoppage.
Year after year, Hagler successfully defended his title ... but one of the most brutal bouts to date ended up going down against Tommy Hearns in 1985, which got billed as 'The War.' It only went three rounds, but all of them were brutal ... especially that opening one, which is regarded as one of the most violent & action-packed to date.
Hagler's reign came to an end in 1987 against none other than boxing icon Sugar Ray Leonard, who came out of retirement for another shot at the title. They went all twelve rounds, & despite many saying Hagler got the better of SRL ... the latter was announced as the winner in a split decision. Granted, Leonard landed a higher percentage of punches.
Hagler is survived by his current wife & five children from a previous marriage. He was 66.
CAIRO (AP) — An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo with 66 passengers and crew on board crashed in the Mediterranean Sea off the Greek island of Crete early Thursday morning, Egyptian and Greek officials said.
Greek defense minister Panos Kammenos said EgyptAir flight 804 made abrupt turns and suddenly lost altitude just before vanishing from radar at around 2.45 a.m. Egyptian time.
Kammenos said the aircraft was 10-15 miles inside the Egyptian FIR and at an altitude of 37,000 feet. "It turned 90 degrees left and then a 360 degree turn toward the right, dropping from 38,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost at about 10,000 feet," he said.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said it was too early to say whether a technical problem or a terror attack caused the plane to crash. "We cannot rule anything out," he told reporters at Cairo airport.
EgyptAir said the Airbus A320 vanished 10 miles (16 kilometers) after it entered Egyptian airspace, around 280 kilometers (175 miles) off Egypt's coastline north of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria. Their account fits closely with an account from Konstantinos Lintzerakos, director of Greece Civil Aviation Authority.
The airline said the Egyptian military had received an emergency signal from the aircraft, an apparent reference to an Emergency Locator Transmitter, or ELT, a battery powered device designed to automatically give out a signal in the event of a sudden loss of altitude or impact.
The Egyptian military denied it had received a distress call and Egypt's state-run daily Al-Ahram quoted an airport official as saying the pilot did not send one. The newspaper did not identify the official.
The absence of a distress call suggests that whatever sent the aircraft plummeting into the Mediterranean was both sudden and brief.
Exploring the possibility that a terror attack brought down the aircraft, Egyptian security officials said they were running background checks on the passengers to see if any of them had links to extremists.
In Paris, the city's prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into the incident. "No hypothesis is favored or ruled out at this stage," the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
All Egyptian officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
of the disappearance of EGYPTAIR flight MS804 and the company confirms that the reason of disappearance hasn't been yet confirmed.
The head of Greece's air traffic controllers association, Serafeim Petrou, told The Associated Press that everything was operating normally prior to the plane's disappearance from radar.
Egyptian military aircraft and navy ships were taking part in a search operation off Egypt's Mediterranean coast to locate the debris of the plane, which was carrying 56 passengers, including one child and two babies, and 10 crew members. The pilot had more than 6,000 flight hours.
Greece also joined the search and rescue operation, officials at the Hellenic National Defense General Staff said.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault offered to send military planes and boats to join the Egyptian search for wreckage.
"We are at the disposition of the Egyptian authorities with our military capacities, with our planes, our boats to help in the search for this plane," he said. He spoke after French President Francois Hollande held an emergency meeting at the Elysee Palace.
Later, the French military said a Falcon surveillance jet monitoring the Mediterranean for migrants had been diverted to help search for the EgyptAir plane. Military spokesman Col. Gilles Jaron told The Associated Press that the jet is joining the Egypt-led search effort, and the French navy may send another plane and a ship to the zone.
Hollande spoke with Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on the phone and agreed to "closely cooperate to establish as soon as possible the circumstances" surrounding the incident, according to a statement issued in Paris.
In Cairo, el-Sissi convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council, the country's highest security body. The council includes the prime minister and the defense, foreign and interior ministers, in addition to the chiefs of the intelligence agencies.
Those on board, according to EgyptAir, included 15 French passengers, 30 Egyptians, two Iraqis, one Briton, one Kuwaiti, one Saudi, one Sudanese, one Chadian, one Portuguese, one Belgian, one Algerian and one Canadian. Ayrault confirmed that 15 French citizens were on board.
Around 15 relatives of passengers on board the missing flight arrived at Cairo airport Thursday morning. Airport authorities brought doctors to the scene after several distressed family members collapsed.
In Paris, relatives of passengers on the EgyptAir flight started arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside the French capital, where their loved ones were last seen alive.
A man and a woman, identified by airport staff as relatives of the flight's passengers, sat at an information desk near the EgyptAir counter at Charles de Gaulle Airport's Terminal 1. The woman was sobbing, holding her face in a handkerchief. The pair were led away by police and airport staff and did not speak to gathered journalists.
The Airbus A320 is a widely used twin-engine, single-aisle plane that operates on short and medium-haul routes. Nearly 4,000 A320s are currently in use around the world. The ubiquity of the A320 means the plane has been involved in several accidents over the years. The last deadly crash involving the plane was Germanwings Flight 9525, in which all 150 onboard died when one of the pilots intentionally crashed it in the French Alps.
Airbus said the aircraft was delivered to EgyptAir in 2003 and had logged 48,000 flight hours before it "was lost" over the Mediterranean. The European plane-maker said in a statement Thursday that it had engines made by Swiss-based engine consortium IAE, and had the serial number 2088.
An EgyptAir plane was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus in March. A man who admitted to the hijacking and is described by Cypriot authorities as "psychologically unstable" is in custody in Cyprus.
The incident renewed security concerns at Egyptian airports after a Russian passenger plane crashed in Sinai last October, killing all 224 people on board. Moscow said it was brought down by an explosive device, and a local branch of the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for planting it.
In 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic near the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, killing all 217 people aboard. U.S. investigators filed a final report that concluded its co-pilot switched off the autopilot and pointed the Boeing 767 downward. Egyptian officials rejected the notion of suicide altogether, insisting some mechanical reason caused the crash.
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Gatopoulos reported from Athens and Charlton from Paris. Associated press reporters Raphael Satter, Sylvie Corbet and Sylvie Crobet contributed to this report from Paris.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Garry Shandling, who as an actor and comedian masterminded a brand of self-inflicted phony docudrama with "The Larry Sanders Show," has died of an apparent heart attack.
Shandling's spokesman Alan Nierob said doctors at a hospital where the comedian was pronounced dead said it appeared he died of a heart attack. Nierob said Shandling had no history of heart trouble.
Coroner's Lt. David Smith said it appeared Shandling died of natural causes, but an official cause of death determination had not yet been made. Smith said no autopsy was planned, but officials would determine Shandling's cause of death based on medical records and his medical history.
Shandling was taken to a hospital after paramedics were dispatched to his Brentwood home around 10:40 a.m. Thursday, police and fire officials said.
His death stunned the comedy community, who praised Shandling's humor, kindness and efforts to support and promote them and their craft.
An innovative and eccentric humorist with pillowy lips and a voice that always seemed on the verge of a whine, Shandling claimed to disdain too much logic cluttering his life.
"The answer isn't gonna be in the facts," he told The Associated Press in 2009. "It's gonna be in intuition. That's how I work creatively. I'm always teaching people that the answer to that creative question is right here, in the room, between us here."
More to the point, it was dealing with the questions he confronted in himself.
Born on Nov. 29, 1949 in Chicago, Shandling was raised in Tucson, Arizona. On arriving in Los Angeles as a young adult, it was a short hop from a brief stint in the advertising business to comedy writing and stand-up.
Then in the 1980s, he began to experiment with TV comedy, and to toy with the sitcom form, with his first series, "It's Garry Shandling's Show," a Showtime project that made no bones about its inherently artificial nature: The actors in this otherwise standard domestic comedy routinely broke the fourth wall to comment on what they were up to. Even the theme song began with the explanatory lyrics, "The theme to Garry's show...."
Then, in August 1992, Shandling created for HBO his comic masterpiece with "The Larry Sanders Show," which starred him as an egomaniacal late-night TV host with an angst-ridden show-biz life behind the scenes.
It was just three months after Johnny Carson had retired from "The Tonight Show," where Shandling had appeared as a stand-up and occasional Carson stand-in. It seemed a wry but deeply felt homage to the King of Late Night.
But it was more. "Larry Sanders" proved to be an act of courage, a brave effort led by someone portraying a character dangerously close to himself. As Larry, Garry dug deep to confront his own demons, and did it brilliantly as the series teetered between dual realities: public and private; make-believe and painfully true.
Real-life celebrities appeared as guests on Larry's show-within-the-show, and also interacted with him "off the air."
David Duchovny, agreeing to come on the show, also came on to Larry romantically once he got the chance.
Jim Carrey delivered a rip-roaring comic tribute to his host on the final broadcast, then, during a commercial break, turned on him in rage over a long-ago slight.
"Are you doing a bit, now?" asked Larry, perplexed.
"We're OFF the air," Carrey hissed. "This is real life now."
The show explored the fuzzy distinction between TV life and real life, and the loneliness of someone at its crossing. The closest thing Larry had to friends were his chronically needy announcer Hank (Jeffrey Tambor) and his Napoleonic producer, Artie (Rip Torn). Together the three actors were among TV's best-ever trios.
"Garry was my dear friend and was and always will be my teacher," Tambor wrote in a statement. "Garry redesigned the wheel of comedy and he was the kindest and funniest of Geniuses. I will miss him so much."
Torn also expressed deep sadness about Shandling's death. "Working with him was one of the great privileges of my career," he wrote. "He was a comic talent of immense originality who enthusiastically encouraged and responded to the originality of others."
After "Sanders" ended in 1998, Shandling's public appearances were few.
He was mentioned as a candidate to follow David Letterman as a bona fide late-night host for CBS' 12:30 a.m. slot, but no deal was made.
"I would not do a show where you just sit and talk to somebody," Shandling had said back in 1993 when he was courted by NBC to take over for Letterman on "Late Night."
His films included "Hurlyburly" in 1998, "What Planet Are You From?" in 2000 and "Zoolander" in 2001.
He hosted the Emmy Awards in 2000 and 2004.
On the latter occasion, he spotted Donald Trump in the audience and congratulated the billionaire developer for hosting the Emmy-nominated "The Apprentice."
"Nice to see a man who's paid his dues, worked hard," Shandling said. "We all know what it feels like to have to build 80-story condos and gambling casinos just to get our foot in the door in show business."
Jamie Masada, owner of comedy club the Laugh Factory, said he met with Shandling a few weeks ago and the comedian didn't appear to have any health problems.
"He looked healthy as could be," Masada said.
"Garry Shandling, besides being a comedian, I always said he was a doctor of soul. He had a lot of kindness in him. He was a very generous person," Masada said.
In his own business dealings, Shandling became one of the rich and famous targeted by private eye Anthony Pellicano, who was sentenced to prison in 2008 on convictions of racketeering and more than six dozen other counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud and wiretapping in the Hollywood wiretaps case.
Pellicano was accused of wiretapping stars such as Sylvester Stallone and bribing police officers to run names of people, including Shandling, through law enforcement databases.
While Shandling never married, his most public romance was with "Sanders" co-star and fiancee Linda Doucett, who played Hank's comely assistant in the series' early seasons.
Doucett sued Shandling after he fired her following their breakup in the mid-1990s, receiving a reported $1 million settlement, The New York Times reported in 2006.
The news of Shandling's death brought an outpouring of reactions from performers who spoke of his impact.
"Garry was a guiding voice of comedy," said actor-comedian Bob Odenkirk. "He set the standard and we're all still trying to meet it."
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AP television writer Frazier Moore in New York contributed to this story.
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