AUGUST

Aug 5

— John "Sandy" Woodward, 81, the admiral led the Royal Navy task force during the 1982 Falklands war, in Sussex, England. No cause of death was given.

— Dmytro Groisman, 41, a pioneering rights who was one of the founders of Ukraine's Amnesty International office and campaigned for years against capital punishment, in Kyiv of a heart attack after years of battling heart disease.

Aug. 7

— Karen Black, 74, a prolific actress who appeared in more than 100 movies and was featured in such counterculture favourites as "Easy Rider," Five Easy Pieces" and "Nashville," in Los Angeles of complications from cancer.

— Margaret Pellegrini, 89, one of the original Munchikins from the 1939 classic movie "The Wizard of Oz," in the Phoenix, Arizona area after suffering a stroke.

Aug. 8

— John Clement, 82, a producer, engineer and songwriter, who helped birth rock 'n roll and pushed country music into modern times working with stars such as Johnny Cash, in Nashville. He had liver cancer.

— Barbara Mertz, 85, a bestselling mystery writer who wrote dozens of novels under two pen names as well as books about ancient Egypt under her own name, in Frederick, Maryland. No cause of death was given.

Aug. 10

— Edyie Gorme, 84, a popular night club and television singer as a solo act and then as a team with her husband Steve Lawrence, in Las Vegas after a brief, undisclosed illness.

— Laslo Csatary , 98, a former police officer indicted in June for abusing Jews and contributing to their deportation to Nazi death camps during World War II, in Bucharest of pneumonia.

Aug. 12

— Johan Friso, 44, the bespectacled Dutch prince who avoided the limelight and gave up his position in line to the throne after getting entangled in a scandal with his bride-to-be, in The Hague of complications for a 2012 skiing accident.

— Spas Wenkoff,84, a Wagnerian tenor who sang with opera companies around the world, in Bad Ischl, Austria. No cause of death was given.

Aug. 13

— Jon Brookes, 44, a drummer with the British indie rock band the Charlatans, which drew on punk, rock and psychedelia and came to be associated with the early 1990s scene "Madchester," in London. He had brain cancer.

— Lothar Bisky, 71, who after German reunification helped steer discredited East German communists into mainstream national politics, in Germany. No cause of death was given.

— Tompall Glaser, 79, a country music singer, publisher and studio owner best known for his association with the outlaw movement against record labels,in Nashville. No cause of death was given.

Aug. 15

— Jacques Verges, 88, the flamboyant French lawyer who earned the nickname "the Devil's advocate" for his defence of former Nazis, terrorist bombers, notorious dictators and their aides, in Paris of cardiac arrest.

— August Schellenberg, 77, a Canadian actor who starred in the "Free Willy" films, in Dallas of lung cancer.

— Manich Man Singh Shresta, the last Nepalese prime minister to serve before protesters ushered in the Himalayan country's first democratic elections in the early 1990s, in Kathmandu of lung cancer.

— Rosalia Mera, 69, a former seamstress who co-founded the global fashion empire of Zara stores and was Spain's richest woman, in La Caruna, Spain after suffering a stroke.

— Jane Harvey, 88, a jazz vocalist who performed with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, in Los Angeles. She had cancer.

Aug. 19

- Russel S. Doughton Jr, 86, whose series of evangelical films about a post-rapture Earth was screened to millions of Christians in chutes around the world, in Carlisle, Iowa, after a long battle with a kidney ailment.

Aug. 20

— Elmore Leonard, 87, the beloved crime novelist whose acclaimed bestsellers and the movies made from them chronicled the violent deaths of many a thug and con man, in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, of complications from a stroke.

Marian McPartland, 95, an English-born renowned jazz pianist who later became host of an internationally syndicated National Public Radio program "Piano Jazz," in Port Washington, New York, of natural causes.

Charles Pollock, 83, a furniture designer who created a chair that became ubiquitous in offices in the mid-20th century and is still in production, in New York, in a fire in his home.

Aug. 21

— C. Gordon Fullerton, 76, a former astronaut who flew on two space shuttle missions and had an extensive career as a research and test pilot for NASA and the Air Force, in Lancaster, California. He suffered a severe stroke in 2009 and had been in a long-term care facility since.

- Sid Bernstein, 95, a music promoter who booked such top acts as Jimi Hendrix, Judy Garland and the Rolling Stones and hit the highest heights when he brought the Beatles to Carnegie Hall in 1964, in New York of natural causes.

Aug. 23

— Gilbert Taylor, 99, the influential "Star Wars" cinematographer who worked on a number of stellar films with some of the world's most famous directors, on the Isle of Wight, England. No cause of death was given.

Aug. 24

— Julie Harris, 87, one of Broadway's most honoured performers whose roles ranged from the flamboyant Sally Bowles in "I Am a Camera" to the reclusive Emily Dickinson in "The Belle of Amherst," in West Chatham, Massachusetts, of congestive heart failure.

— Muriel "Mickie" Sebert, 84, who started as a trainee on Wall Street and became the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, in New York of complications from cancer.

Aug. 29

— Robert r. Taylor, 7 who took soap out of a dish, put it into a pump bottles and changed forever the way people wash up, in Newport Beach, California of cancer.

Aug. 30

— Seamus Heaney, 74, who won the Nobel Prize for literature and gained a global reputation as Ireland's greatest poet since William Butler Yates, in Dublin. No cause of death was given.

— Lofti Mansouri, 84, the Iranian-born former director of the San Francisco Opera, in San Francisco. He had pancreatic cancer.

Aug. 31

— David Frost, 74, a British television interviewer who gained fame for his interview with Richard Nixon that was the signature moment of an illustrious career that spanned half a century and included interviews with a long list of the world's most powerful and famous, including virtually every British prime minister and U.S. president of his times, aboard a cruise ship bound for the Mediterranean, of a heart attack.

— Vanoye Akins 96, a star dancer for the great African-American choreographer Katherine Dunham as her group toured more than 90 countries, in Los Angeles. No cause of death was given.

News from © The Associated Press, 2013