newsmakers

July 24, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

newsmakers

Journalist Schorr dies at age 93

Washington

Veteran reporter and commentator Daniel Schorr, whose hard-hitting reporting for CBS got him on President Richard Nixon’s notorious “enemies list” in the 1970s, has died. He was 93.

Schorr died Friday at a Washington hospital after a brief illness, said Anna Christopher, a spokeswoman for National Public Radio, where Schorr continued to work as a senior news analyst and commentator.

Schorr’s career of more than six decades spanned the spectrum of journalism — beginning in print, then moving to television where he spent 23 years with CBS News and ending with NPR.

Tools used in Elvis’ autopsy questioned

MEMPHIS, Tenn.

The authenticity of tools supposedly used in Elvis Presley’s autopsy and embalming is being questioned, and the items have been withdrawn from a Chicago auction.

Memphis Funeral Home president E.C. Daves told The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Tennessee that there’s no way to tell whether the items being offered for sale through Leslie Hindman Auctioneers are authentic.

Daves says a retired embalmer claims he took the items after Presley’s embalming Aug. 16, 1977. But Daves says another employee told him the equipment was sterilized and used again.

The items included rubber gloves, forceps, a comb, a toe tag and eye liner. They were to be auction in two sets valued at $8,000 and $6,000.

Singer Al Jarreau hospitalized in France

PARIS

Singer Al Jarreau has been taken to a hospital in France with breathing problems.

A hospital in the Alpine city of Gap says the 70-year-old fell ill before a concert Thursday at a jazz festival in the French town of Barcelonnette.

Hospital official Maurice Marchetti said the Grammy Award winner was still in the intensive-care unit Friday and his condition is “worrisome.”

Jarreau, who started out in jazz before crossing over into pop and R&B, is in the midst of a European tour.