Bruce McCandless II, a NASA astronaut who was the first person to fly freely and untethered in space during a 1984 space-shuttle mission has, died in California aged 80. His death was announced by NASA, but details about the place and cause of death were not disclosed.

Surgical problems treated by Shepherd in Papua New Guinea were challenging and interesting.

Kazimierz Piechowski, Clifford Irving, Peter Duffell

• Flo Bjelke-Petersen 1920 – 2017

Florence Bjelke-Petersen projected the human side of a ruthless and corrupt political machine.

Simpson started playing the piano while at Melbourne Boys' High School.

• DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

Kevin Robinson, a BMX freestyle star who in 2006 became the first known rider to land a double flair – a double backflip with a half twist that many other BMX riders considered impossible – and who set world records by soaring 8.2 metres above a ramp and back-flipping 25.6 metres on his bicycle, has died aged 45. The cause was a stroke, his friend Scott Moroney said.

• Roger Westh

Gertrude Westh,  a devoted volunteer with the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind (RVIB), died peacefully on October 30 in her 99th year.

• Raymond Horsley

Wynford Connick came to Australia to boost local knowledge of military explosives, and became an outstanding manager of Australia's research activities in support of the defence forces.

• Ross L. Jones and Susan Kenny

Researcher Geoffrey Kenny was an early investigator of the pineal gland, which has sometimes been called the "third eye", and in a lifetime of study he became a significant contributor to our understanding of its role in the body.

• Grahame Bond

A widely admired musician, actor, teacher and athlete, Rory O'Donoghue was one of the group of young performers who burst onto the national stage as Australia embraced a new kind of nationalism in the wake of the election of the Whitlam government.

Jim Cross, the son of a Yarraville railway worker, had a gift for mathematics which brought him international recognition.

• Richard Woods

Mike Woods was a formidable heavyweight boxer, and it was his powerful physique that earned him a unique honour as a sportsman.

Suzanna Leigh, who has died aged 72, was a British-born 60s starlet who dated, among others, Richard Harris, Steve McQueen and Michael Caine; but it was her friendship with Elvis Presley, for whom she supplied the love interest in the 1966 film Paradise, Hawaiian Style, that dominated her life.

When a wide-eyed Sol Bellear visited Harlem, New York City, for the first time he broke into a sprint to escape a rain shower. "Stop running," one of his hosts from the Black Panther Party yelled at him. "Do you want to get yourself shot?"

Aline, Countess of Romanones, Max Clifford, Charles Robert Jenkins

The author of The Encyclopedia of Surfing, said The Endless Summer was transformative.

• Richard Broome

A school holiday job in a local grocery started Weston Bate's lifelong interest in local and community history.

• Val Pickersgill and Jan Charlwood

Beryl Ida Green, who was a devoted volunteer with the Boy Scout movement, has died aged 88.

Popovich claimed that Soviet military and civilian pilots had confirmed 3000 UFO sightings.

"I was so hopeful of getting a [Olympic] spot, but I knew that they didn't want a girl. I hoped that they would look past the gender thing and give us our chance."

• Greg Fraser

The ACT Liberal parliamentarian was known for standing up for the underdog.

King Michael of Romania, Jack Doroshow, Norman Baker

They just didn't stop calling me a prostitute for ever and ever and ever and ever.

John Roarty is regarded as one of the pre-eminent orthopaedic surgeons, and a pioneer of hip replacement surgery, in Australia. He devoted his life to his profession, and with a gentle tenacity, in his characteristically unassuming way, rose to the top of his field.

Shashi Kapoor, one of India's best-known actors, who appeared in more than 100 films in the 1970s and '80s alone, has died in Mumbai. He was 79.

• John Tidey

In his journalism career of more than 50 years, John Hamilton saw many good times and bad times and was an outstanding reporter of all of them.

• Sidney Bloch and Roger McLennan

Richard Ball was among the first to study psychiatric aspects of sexual orientation at a time when homosexuality and transgender behaviour were punishable by incarceration and worse.

• Michael Cohen

Despite her ordeal in wartime concentration camps, Kitia Altman's work to make sure the horrors of the Holocaust were not forgotten was always in pursuit of a more humane society.

• Keith Harvey

James ("Jim") Harvey was born on February 13, 1922, just a few years after the end of World War I. Jim's mother was born in 1884 in India and her mother, who Jim knew as a child, was born in 1849. Jim has been a link in more than one way between past generations and the present. He was the last of his generation in his family to pass away.