Eliot Asinof, an author who invited readers behind the scenes of the world of sports, has died. He was 88. Asinof died Tuesday at a hospital in Hudson, N.Y., of pneumonia. Asinof was best known for "Eight Men Out," his 1963 retelling of the "Black Sox" scandal in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series. The book was made into a 1988 movie by the same name starring John Cusack, Charlie Sheen and Christopher Lloyd.
Former Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, an economic reformer who led the Communist nation away from poverty and isolation and backed the normalization of ties with the United States, has died. He was 85. Kiet, who was prime minister from 1991 to 1997, died Wednesday in a Singapore hospital, where he was taken Saturday after suffering a stroke. Born into a peasant family, Kiet fought the French and Americans for almost four decades, joining Communist revolutionary forces at the age of 16. As prime minister, Kiet helped craft policies that attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment, vastly expanded trade and enabled the economy to grow at an annual rate of better than 8 percent. Although his first wife and two children were said to have been killed by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, Kiet was a firm supporter of normalizing relations with the U.S., which was finally achieved in 1995.
Bill Stroud, a member of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Philadelphia Inquirer, has died. He was 65. Stroud, who became an expert on use of computers in newspaper publishing, died Friday of prostate cancer at Roxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia. Stroud was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. He followed two brothers into journalism and became a reporter in Arkansas after graduating from the University of Iowa
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