Less than two weeks after Angelina Jolie revealed she'd had a double mastectomy to avoid breast cancer, her aunt died from the disease. Debbie Martin died Sunday at age 61 at a hospital in Escondido, Calif., near San Diego, said her husband, Ron Martin.

Debbie Martin was the younger sister of Jolie's mother, Marcheline Bertrand, whose own death from ovarian cancer in 2007 inspired the surgery that Jolie described in a May 14 op-ed in the New York Times. According to her husband, Debbie Martin had the same defective BRCA1 gene that Jolie does, but didn't know it until after her 2004 cancer diagnosis.

Debbie Martin's death was first reported by E! News.

A message left with representatives seeking comment from Jolie was not immediately returned.

McCartney leaves memento for Elvis

Paul McCartney made his first visit to the onetime home of the King of Rock 'N' Roll and left a gift behind. According to the official Twitter account of the former Beatle, McCartney dropped a personal guitar pick on Elvis Presley's grave and said it was "so Elvis can play in heaven." The lifelong Elvis fan toured Graceland, the Memphis mansion, on Sunday. He was in Memphis to play a show on the North American leg of his "Out There" tour, his first visit to the Bluff City in 20 years.

Israeli wins coveted Kafka: Israeli author Amos Oz has won the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize in the Czech Republic. An international jury selected Oz for the prize, which is awarded annually with a $10,000 prize. Past winners have included American novelist Philip Roth and Nobel laureates Elfriede Jelinek of Austria and Harold Pinter of Britain. It is awarded by the Prague-based Franz Kafka Society to authors whose works "appeal to readers regardless of their origin, nationality and culture."

News Services