Snapper Jones, right, spent 26 years as a TV analyst for the Portland Trail Blazers and reached a national audience through ESPN, NBC and other networks. Alongside him was the Blazers’ play-by-play announcer Bill Schonely.CreditPortland Trail Blazers
By The Associated Press
Steve Jones — better known as Snapper Jones — a former professional basketball player who had a long career as an N.B.A. broadcaster, died on Saturday in Houston. He was 75.
The National Basketball Association, quoting family members and friends, said he died after a long illness, which it did not specify.
Jones was a longtime broadcast analyst for the Portland Trail Blazers, the last team he played for. He reached a national audience working for ESPN, TBS, TNT, Fox Sports Net, the USA Network and NBC, where he was an N.B.A. analyst for more than a decade. He retired in 2006.
In a Twitter message, Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, called Jones “one of the N.B.A.’s all-time great TV analysts.”
Jones was a three-time All-Star in eight seasons with the American Basketball Association, averaging 16 points in 640 regular-season games for Oakland, New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, Carolina, Denver and St. Louis.
He finished his career with Portland, of the N.B.A., in 1975-76, averaging 6.5 points in 64 games in his lone N.B.A. season.
Jones spent 26 years in the Blazers broadcasting booth and provided color commentary for CBS when the team defeated the Philadelphia 76ers to win the 1977 N.B.A. championship. He was a broadcast partner of Bill Walton, the former Trail Blazer and Hall of Famer.
Stephen Howard Jones was born on Oct. 17, 1942, in Alexandria, La., and raised in Portland. He was a standout at Franklin High School and led his squad to an Oregon state championship in 1959. He went on to star at the University of Oregon.
He moved to Houston in 2008, according to the N.B.A. He was the brother of Nick Jones, who also played in the A.B.A. and the N.B.A. in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and who survives him. There was no information available on other survivors.
Shadia in the 1950s.CreditAgence France-Presse — Getty Images
By The Associated Press
Shadia, an Egyptian actress and singer who captivated Arab audiences for decades, died on Tuesday. She was in her late 80s.
Her death was announced on Egypt’s State Information Service website, which did not say where she died. A stroke had left her in a coma at a Cairo military hospital earlier this month.
Shadia, who was known for her silky and playful voice, had roles in more than 100 films and recorded hundreds of singles in a career that began in the late 1940s. She belonged to an era in the Egyptian entertainment industry that critics and entertainers called the “beautiful” or “golden” age, a time that stretched from the 1940s to the ’70s, when some of Egypt’s most highly regarded movies were produced.
Her fan base reached across the Arab world. Her roles ranged from willful country girls and city career women to emotionally disturbed women and hopeless romantics.
Her roles in two films based on novels by the Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz won her lavish praise from Mr. Mahfouz himself.
“Shadia is a top-quality actress who managed to give the prose of my novels body, blood and a distinctive form,” he once said about her roles as a rebellious woman in “Midaq Alley” (1963) and a prostitute in “The Thief and the Dogs” (1962).
Her hit songs, most of them in Egypt’s distinctive vernacular Arabic, have been part of the country’s entertainment scene for decades. One patriotic song, “Oh, Egypt, My Beloved,” is often played on radio and television on national holidays. She also recorded playful, lighthearted songs like “Drive Slowly So We Can Chill” that resonated with many Egyptians.
Shadia was born Fatimah Shaker but was known throughout her career by her single stage name. The earliest facts of her life remain unclear, including the year she was born. (Different sources list different years; the date most often cited is Feb. 8, 1931.)
Shadia was married three times but had no children. Two of her marriages were to film stars, Imad Hamdy and Salah Zulfaqar, with whom she acted in some of her most successful movies.
Shadia abruptly walked away from the entertainment business about three decades ago. She embraced a strict version of Islam, donned the Islamic hijab and lived a life of nearly total seclusion.
“I don’t want to wait until the limelight slowly, slowly moves away from me,” she told an interviewer on her retirement. “I don’t want to play the roles of old mothers in movies after people grew accustomed to seeing me as the young woman in a lead role. I just don’t like people to see lines on my face.”
Fatma Ahmed Kamal Shaker (Arabic: فاطمة أحمد كمال), better known by her stage name Shadia (8 February 1931 – 28 November 2017), was an Egyptian actress and singer. She was famous for her roles in light comedies and drama in the 1950s and 1960s. Her first appearance was in the film el-Aql Fi Agaza (The Mind on Vacation), and she retired after her last film La Tas'alni Man Ana (Don't Ask Me Who I Am).
Born as "Fatma Ahmed Kamal Shaker" in 1931, in the Sharqia Governorate, in Egypt. Her father, Ahmed Kamak Shaker, was an Upper Egyptian man whose family moved to El Sharqia and her mother was from a family of both Egyptian and Turk origin.[1][2][3] She began acting at the age of thirteen.[3]
Shaker was given the stage name "Shadia" by the film director Helmy Rafla.[4] In her heyday during the 1950s and 1960s, Shadia acted in numerous melodramas, romance, and comedy films. However, it was her musical talent as a singer that established Shadia as one of the most important Egyptian cinema stars of her era.[4]
Overall, as "Shadia", she performed in more than 100 films.[4] She starred in more than 30 films with the actor Kamal el-Shennawi, and sang opposite Farid al-Atrash and Abdel Halim Hafez, such as in "The People's Idol" (1967). She also appeared with Faten Hamama in "An Appointment with Life" (1954), and in "The Unknown Woman" (1959) she played the role of Fatma in a heavy melodrama. Other notable films she starred in include "The Thief and the Dogs" (1962) and in her comedy roles in films "Wife Number 13" (1962) and "My Wife the General Manager" (1966).[4] Indeed, Shadia was often cast in cunning and cheeky roles, however, she also played serious roles, such as in "The Road" (1964), and in the stage version of "Raya and Sakina", which was based on the true story of two Alexandrian serial killers and directed by Hussein Kama (1953).[4]
After retiring from acting, Shadia joined a number of Egyptian actresses who took on the veil (hijab) in an act of Islamic resistance and salvation.[4]
Shadia is considered one of the most popular and most talented singers and actresses in the Arabic movie and entertainment industry. Her songs and movies are still sought after, and her songs are popular among all generations.
Shadia was hospitalized on 4 November 2017 after suffering a massive stroke in Cairo. She was placed under intensive care.[5] Her nephew, Khaled Shaker, said during a televised phone conversation that she recovered from the stroke and could identify her relatives and the people around her. He added, however, that her illness was complicated by pneumonia, despite her recovery.[6] Shadia's condition stabilized on 9 November,[5] and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi visited her that day at Al-Galaa Hospital. Shaker later said that the first words she spoke after recovering were "I want to go home", but had speech difficulties in general.[7]
On 28 November, Shadia died from respiratory failure caused by the pneumonia.[8]
Fatma Ahmed Kamal Shaker (Arabic: فاطمة أحمد كمال), better known by her stage name Shadia (b. February 8, 1931, Sharqia Governorate, Egypt – d. November 28, 2017, Cairo, Egypt), was an Egyptian actress and singer. She was famous for her roles in light comedies and drama in the 1950s and 1960s. Her first appearance was in the film el-Aql Fi Agaza (The Mind on Vacation), and she retired after her last film La Tas'alni Man Ana (Don't Ask Me Who I Am).
Born Fatma Ahmed Kamal Shaker in 1931, in the Sharqia Governorate, in Egypt. Her father, Ahmed Kamak Shaker, was an Upper Egyptian man whose family moved to El Sharqia and her mother was from a family of both Egyptian and Turk origin. She began acting at the age of thirteen.
Shaker was given the stage name "Shadia" by the film director Helmy Rafla. In her heyday during the 1950s and 1960s, Shadia acted in numerous melodramas, romance, and comedy films. However, it was her musical talent as a singer that established Shadia as one of the most important Egyptian cinema stars of her era.
Overall, as "Shadia", she performed in more than 100 films. She starred in more than 30 films with the actor Kamal el-Shennawi, and sang opposite Farid al-Atrash and Abdel Halim Hafez, such as in "The People's Idol" (1967). She also appeared with Faten Hamama in "An Appointment with Life" (1954), and in "The Unknown Woman" (1959) she played the role of Fatma in a heavy melodrama. Other notable films she starred in include "The Thief and the Dogs" (1962) and in her comedy roles in films "Wife Number 13" (1962) and "My Wife the General Manager" (1966). Indeed, Shadia was often cast in cunning and cheeky roles, however, she also played serious roles, such as in "The Road" (1964), and in the stage version of "Raya and Sakina", which was based on the true story of two Alexandrian serial killers and directed by Hussein Kama (1953).
After retiring from acting, Shadia joined a number of Egyptian actresses who took on the veil (hijab) in an act of Islamic resistance and salvation.
Shadia is considered one of the most popular and most talented singers and actresses in the Arabic movie and entertainment industry. Her songs and movies are still sought after, and her songs are popular among all generations.
Shadia was hospitalized on November 4, 2017 after suffering a massive stroke in Cairo. She was placed under intensive care. Her nephew, Khaled Shaker, said during a televised phone conversation that she recovered from the stroke and could identify her relatives and the people around her. He added, however, that her illness was complicated by pneumonia, despite her recovery. Shadia's condition stabilized on November 9, and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi visited her that day at Al-Galaa Hospital.
On November 28, 2017, Shadia died from respiratory failure caused by the pneumonia.
Naim Suleymanoglu in 1988 during a lift that won him a gold medal in the 60-kilogram Olympic weightlifting competition at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.CreditSimon Bruty/Getty Images
Naim Suleymanoglu, a Turkish weight lifter whose diminutive size and stunning strength earned him the nickname Pocket Hercules on his way to winning three consecutive Olympic gold medals, died on Saturday in Istanbul. He was 50.
He had been hospitalized in late September with liver failure caused by cirrhosis and had received a transplant on Oct. 6, according to Turkey’s Anadolu news agency, which announced the death. On Nov. 11, he had surgery for a brain hemorrhage.
Suleymanoglu, who stood about 4 feet 10 inches and competed as a featherweight, was internationally known by the time he competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Not only had he set more than 20 world records; he had also defected from Bulgaria, where he and his family were oppressed ethnic Turks, to Turkey, which celebrated him as a national hero.
With flag-waving Turks cheering him in the wrestling auditorium in Seoul, Suleymanoglu (pronounced soo-lay-MAHN-oo-loo) won his first Olympic gold medal.
In the snatch — in which competitors raise the barbell overhead in a single continuous motion — Suleymanoglu lifted 336 pounds on his third and final attempt. Then, in the clean and jerk, which requires raising the barbell to the chest and then overhead, he set a new world record in his weight class by lifting 419 pounds.
“I have done the greatest a man can do in sport, but my thoughts are not on the gold medal or the world records,” Suleymanoglu said before flying from Seoul to Ankara on a jet provided by Prime Minister Turgut Ozal of Turkey, according to Sports Illustrated. “My thoughts are with my family. My deepest hope is that they can join me in Turkey.”
Photo
Suleymanoglu celebrating his Olympic win in Seoul. He was internationally known by the time he competed there in 1988.CreditAssociated Press
Bulgaria allowed his parents and two brothers to join him in Turkey about a month later.
He celebrated his victory in West Germany, France and the United States. In Washington, he attended the premiere of the movie “Twins,” where he could stand face to face with the equally diminutive Danny DeVito (who co-starred in the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger) when the two met.
Suleymanoglu’s victory at the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain, was a less dramatic moment. His defection was further in the past. And he did not set any records by defeating a Bulgarian for the gold medal, as he had four years earlier.
“That was 1988,” Suleymanoglu said after his victory. “But now it doesn’t matter at all. Any opponent is the same for me.”
The Turks who cheered for him were nonetheless transfixed by the undersize sports superstar.
“He is all our expectations, someone who can tell our feelings to the whole world,” Levent Bozkurt, a student from Ankara, told The Chicago Tribune. “He is like a leader who shows Turkey’s power, and we just follow him.”
At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Suleymanoglu and his closest rival, Valerios Leonidis of Greece, traded world-record lifts in an epic competition of little men wielding big weights. Their match came down to Leonidis’s final lift. When he failed, Suleymanoglu became the first weight lifter to win gold medals in three successive Olympics.
Suleymanoglu was not the only “Pocket Hercules.” Manohar Aich, a 4-foot-11 bodybuilder who won the Mr. Universe competition in 1952, had the same nickname. He died last year, at 103.
Photo
Suleymanoglu at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where he became the first weight lifter to win gold medals in three successive Olympics.CreditSimon Bruty/Getty Images
Naim Suleimanov was born on Jan. 23, 1967, in Ptichar, Bulgaria. His father, a miner and a farmer, was five feet tall. His mother stood 4-foot-7.
Naim lifted rocks and tree branches as a child; at 14, he won a 19-and-under world title and was presumably going to compete in the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. But Bulgaria joined the Eastern bloc’s boycott, in retaliation for the United States’ refusal to participate in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the year before.
Repression against ethnic Turks was growing in Bulgaria; one measure required them to use Bulgarian adaptations of their names. So Naim Suleimanov became Naum Shalamonov. And he decided that he had to defect.
After winning the gold medal at a World Cup wrestling tournament in Melbourne, Australia, in 1986, he fled from his Bulgarian minders and went into hiding for four days before appearing at the Turkish consulate in Canberra to announce his intention to defect. He flew first to London and then to Istanbul.
Soon after, he changed his name to a Turkish one: Naim Suleymanoglu.
And the Turkish government paid Bulgaria’s weight-lifting federation $1 million (or more, according to some accounts) to expedite Suleymanoglu’s eligibility to compete for his new country in 1988.
Information on survivors was not available.
Suleymanoglu arrived in Sydney, Australia, in 2000, hoping for a fourth successive Olympic gold medal. But he was 33 and smoking 55 cigarettes a day. And, with some hubris, he made a strategic error, choosing to start in the snatch with a very high weight of 319 pounds.
Three times he tried. And three times the Pocket Hercules failed.
Naim Süleymanoğlu (born in Bulgaria as Naim Suleimanov but forced to change to Naum Shalamanov) (Bulgarian: from Наим Сюлейманов to Наум Шаламанов; 23 January 1967 – 18 November 2017) was a Turkish, World and Olympic Champion in weightlifting, who was nicknamed “The Pocket Hercules” because of his small stature of 1.47 m (4 ft 10 in). In the 1988 Summer Olympics, he set a record by lifting 190 kg in the clean and jerk.[1] He was awarded the Olympic Order in 2001. In 2000 and 2004, he was elected a member of the International Weightlifting FederationHall of Fame.[2]
Süleymanoğlu is the first and only weightlifter to have snatched 2.5 times his body weight and also is the second of only seven lifters to date to clean and jerk three times his body weight.[3] He is the only weightlifter to date to clean and jerk 10 kilos more than triple his bodyweight.[4] Süleymanoğlu set his first world record at age 16 but missed his first chance at Olympic success in 1984, when Bulgaria joined the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.[citation needed]
Süleymanoğlu was born in Ptichar, Kardzhali Province, Bulgaria to a Turkish family. His father was a miner who stood only five feet tall, while is mother was four-foot-seven.[5] He won championships in his teens and may have competed at the 1984 Summer Olympics had Bulgaria not joined in a boycott by the Eastern Bloc.[6]
In the 1980’s Bulgaria’s government implemented a program called the Revival Process which required ethnic minorities to adopt Slavic names and barred their languages.[7] As a result, Süleymanoğlu changed his name to Naum Shalamanov in 1985.[5]
While on a trip to the World Cup Final in Melbourne in 1986, Suleimanov escaped his handlers, and after several days in hiding, he defected at the Turkish Embassy in Canberra. After making his way to Istanbul, he changed his name to Süleymanoğlu.[5]
In order for him to compete at the 1988 Seoul Olympics the Bulgarian government had to agree to release his eligibility to Turkey. The Turks paid Bulgaria $1 million for his release.[6] At the Olympics, Süleymanoğlu did not disappoint, winning the featherweight gold medal. His performance was high enough to win the weight class above his.[8] He retired at the age of 22, after winning the world championship in 1989. However, he returned in 1991 before winning a second Olympic gold medal at Barcelona in 1992. Between the Olympiads, Süleymanoğlu continued to win world titles and set records.[citation needed]
The 1996 Olympic Games were to be his swan song and he retired after winning a third consecutive Olympic gold medal in Atlanta at the 1996 Olympic Games. That competition was noted for the rivalry between himself and Greece's Valerios Leonidis, with the arena divided into partisan Turkish and Greek crowds. At the end of the competition they were the very last competitors remaining as they traded three straight world-record lifts; Süleymanoğlu managed to raise 187.5 kg and then Leonidis failed in his attempt to lift 190 kg and burst into tears, to which he took the silver medal and was comforted by Süleymanoğlu. Announcer Lynn Jones proclaimed "You have just witnessed the greatest weightlifting competition in history," according to Ken Jones in the London Independent.[9][10][11][12]
Süleymanoğlu made another comeback in a late attempt to earn a fourth gold medal at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney but failed to lift 145 kg,[13] which would have been an Olympic record, and was eliminated from the competition. He was awarded the Olympic Order in 2001. In 2000 and 2004 he was elected member of the International Weightlifting FederationHall of Fame.[2]
He suffered from cirrhosis of the liver for a long time.[14] In 2009 he was in hospital for nearly three months.[15]
On 25 September 2017 he was admitted to a hospital due to the liver failure[14] On 6 October a liver transplantationwas made when a liver donor was found.[14] On 11 November he had surgery due to a hemorrhage in the brain and a subsequent edema. He died on 18 November 2017.[16]
Naim Süleymanoğlu (born in Bulgaria as Naim Suleimanov but forced to change to Naum Shalamanov) (Bulgarian: from Наим Сюлейманов to Наум Шаламанов; 23 January 1967 – 18 November 2017) was a Turkish, World and Olympic Champion in weightlifting, who was nicknamed “The Pocket Hercules” because of his small stature of 1.47 m (4 ft 10 in). In the 1988 Summer Olympics, he set a record by lifting 190 kg in the clean and jerk.[1] He was awarded the Olympic Order in 2001. In 2000 and 2004, he was elected a member of the International Weightlifting FederationHall of Fame.[2]
Süleymanoğlu is the first and only weightlifter to have snatched 2.5 times his body weight and also is the second of only seven lifters to date to clean and jerk three times his body weight.[3] He is the only weightlifter to date to clean and jerk 10 kilos more than triple his bodyweight.[4] Süleymanoğlu set his first world record at age 16 but missed his first chance at Olympic success in 1984, when Bulgaria joined the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.[citation needed]
