‘ FRASIER’ DAD JOHN MAHONEY DIES AT 77
Actor John Mahoney, who portrayed the no- nonsense father in the TV sitcom “Frasier,” has died in Chicago at the age of 77, his longtime theater company said Monday. Mahoney played the iconic role of Martin Crane for all 11 seasons of the popular sitcom until 2004. The Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago said Mahoney died on Sunday ( Monday in Manila) due to complications from cancer while in hospice care. The character actor was born in England, but moved to the United States at the age of 19 to teach English at a college in Illinois. Mahoney got his acting start in Chicago relatively lately, when he was 40 in the late 1970s, after fellow actors John Malkovich and Gary Sinise invited him to join the then- nascent Steppenwolf. Mahoney appeared in more than 30 productions at the prestigious theater. Mahoney also appeared in numerous films and TV shows, and continued to appear on television as recently as 2015 in the TV series “Foyle’s War.” Mahoney won a number of acting awards, including Tony and Screen Actors Guild trophies.
HONG KONG DEMOCRACY ACTIVISTS WALK FREE
Hong Kong’s leading democracy activists won an appeal against their jail terms at the city’s highest court on Tuesday in a case seen as a test for the independence of the city’s judiciary, which some fear is under pressure from Beijing. Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow were jailed in August last year for their role in the 2014 Umbrella Movement mass pro- democracy protests, after Hong Kong’s government pushed for harsher sentences. A lower court had given Wong and Law community service orders and Chow a suspended sentence. But after the government’s intervention they were jailed for between six and eight months by the Court of Appeal. Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma said on Tuesday that the terms given to the trio were “significantly more severe” than the range previously handed down for unlawful assembly offenses. Handing down the judgment in the Court of Final Appeal he also said had been “inappropriate” to hand the sentences down retrospectively. The government’s move to seek jail sentences for the activists was seen as further evidence of Beijing’s growing influence over the semi- autonomous city, with Chinese authorities particularly riled by the emergence of activists calling for independence for Hong Kong.