Terry Melcher, Shaper of Calif. Surf Sound, Dies
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LOS ANGELES, Calif.  - Terry Melcher, a producer,  composer and songwriter who worked with the Beach Boys and  helped shape the '60s era California surf music sound, has  died, according to his publicist. He was 62.
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An eight-day heat wave killed as many as 28 people in Southern California before the temperatures finally began to ebb, coroners in four counties said Wednesday.
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HOLLYWOOD - Janet Leigh, Hollywood&#39;s perfect &quot;nice girl&quot; ingenue who memorably changed her acting image and earned an Academy Award nomination in Alfred Hitchcock&#39;s classic &quot;Psycho,&quot; has died.
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LONG BEACH  In an emotional hearing, a judge on Thursday sentenced Coronado fisherman Stephen Otto Reitz to 26 years to life in prison and derided Reitz&#39;s defense that he was sleepwalking when he killed his girlfriend Eva Marie ...
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LOS ANGELES  &#151; Herman Brix, the Olympic shot putter who played Tarzan in a 1935 movie, has died. He was 100.
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LIMA/LONDON  - Veteran British disc jockey John  Peel, who championed new music trends like punk on mainstream  radio, has died of a heart attack on holiday in Peru.
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For Guitarist Steve Cropper, the day the music died was not February 3, 1959, when Buddy Holly died. It was an icy Dec 10, 1967, when the plane carrying a 26-year-old Otis Redding went down in a Wisconsin lake.
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Steve Irwin, the Australian TV presenter known as the "Crocodile Hunter," has died after being stung in a marine accident off Australia's north coast.
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NEW YORK  &#151; Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera diva who was a global icon of can-do American culture with her dazzling voice, bubbly personality and management moxie in the arts world, died Monday of cancer, her manager said. She was 78.
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Terry Melcher, a key architect of the California pop sound of the &#39;60s as a record producer, songwriter and artist, died Friday at age 62 after a long struggle with melanoma.
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Janet Leigh, the wholesome beauty who co-starred with James Stewart, John Wayne and Frank Sinatra in films of the 1940s to 1960s and achieved her most lasting fame as the victim of a shower slashing in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," died Sunday at her Beverly Hills, Calif., home, the New York Daily News reported on its Web site Monday. She was 77.
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MARGARET RIVER, Australia  - The waves have been   nicknamed Cyclops, Jaws and Dungeons and are the new   life-and-death playground for a unique breed of surfers who   ride gargantuan ocean waves as big as a seven storey building.
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Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera diva who was a global icon of can-do American culture with her dazzling voice, bubbly personality and management moxie in the arts world, died Monday of cancer, her manager said. She was 78. It had been revealed just last month that Sills was gravely ill with inoperable lung cancer. She died about 9 p.m. Monday, said her manager, Edgar Vincent.
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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. -- Artie Shaw, a clarinetist and bandleader who recorded the Big Band hit &quot;Begin the Beguine,&quot; is dead at age 94, according to the manager of his orchestra.
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By San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Jun. 1
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By San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  May 30--For the past week, residents of the Bay Area have been transfixed by the plight of the two injured humpback whales that got lost in the fresh waters of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
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By Dnichols@recordnet.Com, The Record, Stockton, Calif.  Sep.