Deaths elsewhere

Earl L. Butz, an outspoken U.S. agriculture secretary forced from office in 1976 for making a racist joke and once a dean at Purdue University, died Saturday in Washington, D.C. He was 98.

The free-market advocate had a relaxed and earthy style that won him acclaim as an after-dinner speaker but caused problems in his public life.

Controversy began swirling around Butz after President Richard Nixon appointed him secretary of agriculture in 1971. The farm economist figured in public disputes ranging from foreign grain sales to high meat prices.

He was forced to resign in October 1976 after telling an obscene joke that was derogatory to blacks.

The slur was overheard by John Dean, the former counsel to Nixon, who was jailed in the Watergate scandal, and Dean's report on it was published in Rolling Stone magazine.

Butz, who was raised on a 160-acre livestock farm in northeastern Indiana, was assistant secretary of agriculture from 1954 to 1957, during the Eisenhower administration.

Butz maintained that farmers should rely on a free market driven by exports and not federal subsidies.

In 1947, Yancey opened her first stand with a partner, calling it Mr. Fatburger. They parted ways five years later, and Yancey changed the business name to Fatburger with sights on expanding it.

Beto Carrero, a former country singer who built what is billed as Latin America's biggest theme park, died Friday. He was 70. Carrero, whose given name was João Batista Sergio Murad, died of heart problems while undergoing related surgery. Beto Carrero World, which includes an amusement park and a zoo with 700 animals, opened in 1991.

Carrero was born into a poor family in the southeastern city of Sao Jose do Rio Preto and worked as a country musician, radio announcer and ad salesman before starting an advertising agency.