Celebrated political cartoonist Boris Yefimov, 108, who drew brutally satirical images of the Soviet Union's foes in the service of Josef Stalin, died Wednesday in Moscow. His death was given wide coverage on Russian state television. No cause was given. His cartoons spanned virtually the entire history of the communist state, from shortly after the 1917 revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

J.L. Chestnut Jr., 77, the first black lawyer in Selma and a prominent attorney in civil rights cases across a half century, died Tuesday in Birmingham, Ala., of kidney failure.

A Selma native who got his law degree at Howard University, Chestnut returned to his hometown in 1958 and became a key legal figure in the civil rights battles in Selma. Later he defended blacks in major voter fraud prosecutions and helped black farmers make financial claims against the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Hayden Carruth, 87, an award-winning poet who wrote about the people and places of northern Vermont, died Monday in Munnsville, N.Y., after having a stroke.

ASSOCIATED PRESS