Angel Tavira, a one-handed violinist who dedicated his life to Mexican folk music and won a Cannes Film Festival award for his first movie at age 82, died Monday of kidney problems. He was 84.

Tavira started playing the violin at age 6. When he was 13, he lost his right hand while setting off fireworks at a fair. He pursued his music career nonetheless, playing the violin with the bow tied to his stump.

Mexican director Fernando Vargas made a documentary about Tavira in 2002, and two years later cast him in the fictional film "The Violin."

With no previous experience, Tavira won an acting award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival for his role as the patriarch of a family of street musicians who support an armed rebel movement.

William R. Bennett Jr., a physicist who helped develop one of the first lasers nearly 50 years ago, died Sunday from cancer of the esophagus at his home outside Philadelphia. He was 78.

In 1960, Bennett, Ali Javan and Donald Herriott built the first gas laser, which generated a continuous infrared beam from a mixture of helium and neon, at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. Bennett would go on to develop nearly a dozen additional lasers.

The research helped lead to the widespread use of lasers in modern technology, in things such as CD players, supermarket scanners, surgical tools and weapons navigation systems. The argon laser helped provide an effective treatment for the prevention of blindness in diabetes and remains widely used.

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