Butch Trucks, a drummer who was one of the founding members of the seminal Southern rock group the Allman Brothers Band died on Tuesday at his home in West Palm Beach, Florida. He was 69. Trucks was one of the band's two original drummers; the other was Jai Johanny Johanson, known as Jaimoe. Trucks was considered to be the straightforward rhythm player, while Mr. Johanson added R&B and jazz influences. The Allman Brothers Band, led by the guitarist Duane Allman and the keyboardist and vocalist Gregg Allman, helped define Southern rock, a style that incorporated elements of blues, country and jazz as well as rock.
Mario Soares, who has died aged 92, steered Portugal to democracy after some 50 years of dictatorship; he served three terms as Socialist prime minister and in 1986 became his country's first civilian president in 60 years. A lawyer by training and a moderate socialist by conviction, Soares made his name as a dissident under Antonio de Oliveira Salazar's totalitarian regime, during which he endured 12 terms in prison and was deported to an African colony, before being forced into exile in 1968. He returned to Portugal after the bloodless army-backed "Carnation Revolution" of April 1974, when he was mobbed by thousands of supporters and marched in triumph through the streets of Lisbon.
Portuguese president and prime minister Mario Soares and his wife Maria Barroso, 2006. Credit: AP
[UK Labour MP] Tam Dalyell, who has died aged 84, was Parliament's leading gadfly over 43 years, the final four as Father of the House. His most celebrated campaign was over the sinking of the General Belgrano with the loss of 368 lives during the Falklands War, stemming from his conviction that Margaret Thatcher had lied to MPs. He conducted his one-man crusades with a tenacity bordering on the obsessive, and burning indignation at perceived wrongdoing. He triggered the fall of at least one minister, the trade and industry secretary Leon Brittan - whom he told apologetically that his real target had been Mrs Thatcher. Engaging but infuriating, not least to his colleagues, Dalyell had a unique ability to get under ministers' skins.