Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose image of the Prophet Mohammed was at the centre of widespread anti-Danish anger in the Muslim world in the mid-2000s, has died aged 86.

Mr Westergaard’s family announced his death to Danish media late on Sunday and told the newspaper Berlingske that Mr Westergaard died in his sleep after a long period of illness.

Danish media reported that he died on July 14, a day after his birthday.

From the early 1980s, Mr Westergaard worked as a cartoonist for Jyllands-Posten, one of Denmark’s leading newspapers, and was associated with the daily until he turned 75.

Mr Westergaard became known worldwide in 2005 for his controversial depiction of the Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten, which published 12 editorial cartoons of the principal figure of Islam.

Muslims consider images of the prophet to be sacrilegious and encouraging idolatry.

The images, particularly Mr Westergaard’s, sparked a huge wave of anger in the Muslim world and escalated into violent anti-Denmark protests by Muslims worldwide in 2006.

Several newspapers in neighbouring Norway also published the controversial cartoons.

Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria were burned down by angry crowds during the demonstrations.

Political observers in the Nordic countries have described the cartoon incident as one of the most severe foreign policy crises for both Denmark and Norway in their recent histories.

In the aftermath of the uproar, Mr Westergaard received several death threats and was forced to have police protection.

In 2008, three people were arrested for planning to kill him, and in 2010 a 28-year-old Somali man broke into his home with an axe and knife.

The man was later sentenced to 10 years in prison.

“I would like to be remembered as the one who struck a blow for the freedom of expression.

“But there’s no doubt that there are some who will instead remember me as a Satan who insulted the religion of over one billion people,” Mr Westergaard said, according to Berlingske.

Jyllands-Posten said in an editorial published on Monday that with the death of Mr Westergaard “it is more important than ever to emphasise that the struggle for freedom of expression, which became his destiny, is the struggle of all of us for freedom”.

Mr Westergaard is survived by his wife and five children, 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Funeral arrangements were not immediately known.

Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Muslim cleric known as “the blind sheikh” who was convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and of planning a broader “war of urban terrorism” in the United States, died on Saturday in a North Carolina prison, authorities said.

Abdel-Rahman, 78, died of natural causes at 9:40 a.m. (1440 GMT) at a medical centre at a federal prison compound in Butner, North Carolina, according to Greg Norton, a spokesman.

The cleric, who had diabetes and coronary artery disease, had been incarcerated at the complex for nearly 10 years, Norton said.

Earlier, the cleric’s son Ammar said his family had received a phone call in Eygpt from a U.S. representative saying his father had died.

The Egyptian-born Abdel-Rahman remained a spiritual leader for radical Muslims even after more than 20 years in prison.

With his long grey beard, sunglasses and red and white clerical cap, the charismatic Abdel-Rahman was the face of radical Islam in the 1980s and 1990s. He preached a fiery brand of Islam that called for the death of people and governments he disapproved of and the installation of an Islamic government in Egypt. His following was tied to fundamentalist killings and bomb attacks around the world.

“Abdel-Rahman was at the vortex of some of the bloodiest and most consequential terrorist incidents of the 1990s – incidents that would establish the patterns of global terrorism that continue to bedevil us today,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University in Washington.

“He was a tireless and enthusiastic in projecting his message of violence and hatred,” said Hoffman, who served on the U.S. government’s commission that reviewed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington and over Pennsylvania.

Abdel-Rahman, who was born in a village along the Nile on May 3, 1938, lost his eyesight due to childhood diabetes and grew up studying a Braille version of the Koran.

As an adult he became associated with the fundamentalist Islamic Group and was imprisoned and accused of issuing a fatwa leading to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, against whom he had railed for years. The sheikh said he was hung upside-down from the ceiling, beaten with sticks and given electric shocks while held but he was eventually acquitted and went into self-imposed exile in 1990.

He managed to get to New York after the U.S. Embassy in Sudan granted him a tourist visa in 1990 – despite the fact that he was on the State Department’s list of people with ties to terror groups.

U.S. authorities blamed a computer error for the visa, but the mistake was compounded in 1991 when Abdel-Rahman was given a green card and permanent U.S. resident status. The New York Times reported the CIA had approved the visa application for Abdel-Rahman, who had supported the anti-Soviet mujahedin in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Abdel-Rahman preached his radical message and lived in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and nearby Jersey City, New Jersey, building a strong following among fundamentalist Muslims. Even in exile, he remained a force in the Middle East, where followers listened to cassette tapes and radio broadcasts of his sermons decrying the Egyptian government and Israel.

While in the United States Abdel-Rahman and his disciples would be linked to the 1990 slaying in New York of militant Rabbi Meir Kahane, the 1992 killing of an anti-fundamentalist writer in Egypt and attacks on foreign tourists in Egypt.

U.S. authorities took action in 1992 by revoking Abdel-Rahman’s green card on the grounds that he had lied about a bad check charge in Egypt and about having two wives when he entered the country. He was facing the possibility of deportation when a truck bomb went off in the basement parking garage of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 in an attack that made Americans realise that they were not immune to international terrorism.

Four months later Abdel-Rahman was arrested and went on trial with several followers in 1995, accused of plotting a day of terror for the United States – assassinations and synchronized bombings of the U.N. headquarters, a major federal government facility in Manhattan and tunnels and a bridge linking New York City and New Jersey.

The indictment said Abdel-Rahman and his followers planned to “levy a war of urban terrorism against the United States” as part of a jihad – or holy war – to stop U.S. support for Israel and change its overall Middle East policy.

The defendants were not directly charged with the 1993 World Trade Center attack but were convicted of conspiring with those who did carry out the bombing.

Abdel-Rahman’s convictions also included plotting to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a visit to the United States in 1993, a Jewish New York state legislator and a Jewish New York State Supreme Court justice.

Much of the case against Abdel-Rahman and his followers was based on video and audio recordings made with the help of a bodyguard for the sheikh who became an FBI informant. A video also showed four defendants mixing fertiliser and diesel fuel for bombs.

After a nine-month trial, the sheikh and nine followers were found guilty in October 1995 on 48 of 50 charges.

He did not testify at his trial but at a sentencing hearing Abdel-Rahman gave a passionate speech of more than 90 minutes through a translator, proclaiming his innocence and denouncing the United States as an enemy of his faith.

“I have not committed any crime except telling people about Islam,” he said.

Abdel-Rahman was still an important figure in radical Islam even after years in prison. A year before his al Qaeda followers pulled off the most destructive assault on U.S. soil, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden had pledged a jihad to free Abdel-Rahman from prison. When Mohammed Mursi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his short-lived presidency of Egypt in 2012, he said winning the sheikh’s freedom would be a priority and the jihadists who attacked an Algerian oilfield and took hostages in 2013 also demanded his release.

In 2006 one of Abdel-Rahman’s lawyers, Lynne F. Stewart, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for helping smuggle messages from the cleric to his followers in Egypt.

Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and for five decades defied U.S. efforts to topple him, died on Friday. He was 90.

A towering figure of the 20th century and Cold War icon, Castro stuck to his ideology beyond the collapse of Soviet communism and remained widely respected in parts of the world that struggled against colonial rule.

Castro had been in poor health since an intestinal ailment nearly killed him in 2006. He formally ceded power to his younger brother, Raul, two years later.

Wearing a green military uniform, a somber Raul Castro, 85, appeared on state television on Friday night to announce Fidel’s death, 60 years to the day since the two brothers and a few supporters left Mexico on a boat to bring revolution to Cuba.

“At 10:29 at night, the chief commander of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, died,” he said, without giving a cause of death.

“Ever onward, to victory,” he said, using the slogan of the Cuban revolution.

Tributes came in from around the world.

“History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him,” U.S. President Barack Obama said, extending “a hand of friendship” to Cuba.

Venezuela’s leftist President Nicolas Maduro urged “revolutionaries of the world” to follow Castro’s legacy, while Pope Francis said he was grieving and praying for the repose of the professed atheist, whom he met in Cuba last year.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, said “the Chinese people have lost a close comrade and a sincere friend”. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Twitter: “Fidel Castro is dead!,” without elaborating.

DECADES OF HOSTILITY

Raul Castro, who glorified his older brother, has changed Cuba since taking over by introducing market-style economic reforms and agreeing with the United States in December 2014 to re-establish diplomatic ties and end decades of hostility.

It remained unclear whether Trump would continue efforts to normalize relations with Cuba or fulfill a campaign promise to close the U.S. embassy in Havana once again.

Fidel Castro himself offered only lukewarm support for the 2014 deal with Washington, raising questions about whether he approved of ending hostilities with his longtime enemy.

He did not meet Barack Obama when he visited Havana earlier this year, the first time an American president had stepped foot on Cuban soil since 1928.

Days later, Castro wrote a scathing newspaper column condemning Obama’s “honey-coated” words and reminding Cubans of the U.S. efforts to overthrow and weaken the Communist government.

News of Castro’s death spread slowly among Friday night revelers on the streets of Havana. One famous club that was still open when word came in quickly closed.

Some residents reacted with sadness to the news.

“I’m very upset. Whatever you want to say, he is a public figure that the whole world respected and loved,” said Havana student Sariel Valdespino.

But in Miami, where many exiles from Castro’s government live, a large crowd waving Cuban flags cheered, danced and banged on pots and pans.

Castro’s body will be cremated, according to his wishes.

Cuba declared nine days of mourning, during which time the ashes will be taken to different parts of the country. A burial ceremony will be held on Dec. 4.

The bearded Fidel took power in a 1959 revolution and ruled Cuba for 49 years with a mix of charisma and iron will, creating a one-party state and becoming a central figure in the Cold War.

He was demonized by the United States and its allies but admired by many leftists around the world, especially socialist revolutionaries in Latin America and Africa.

Nelson Mandela, once freed from prison in 1990, repeatedly thanked Castro for his efforts in helping to weaken apartheid.

In April, in a rare public appearance at the Communist Party conference, Fidel Castro shocked party apparatchiks by referring to his own imminent mortality.

“Soon I will be like all the rest. Our turn comes to all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban communists will remain,” he said.

Castro was last seen by ordinary Cubans in photos showing him talking to Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang this month.

MILITARY FATIGUES, CIGARS

Transforming Cuba from a playground for rich Americans into a symbol of resistance to Washington, Castro crossed swords with 10 U.S. presidents while in power, and outlasted nine of them.

He fended off a CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 as well as countless assassination attempts.

His alliance with Moscow helped trigger the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a 13-day showdown with the United States that brought the world the closest it has been to nuclear war.

Wearing green military fatigues and chomping on cigars for many of his years in power, Castro was famous for long, fist-pounding speeches filled with blistering rhetoric, often aimed at the United States.

At home, he swept away capitalism and won support for bringing schools and hospitals to the poor. But he also created legions of enemies and critics, concentrated among the exiles in Miami who saw him as a ruthless tyrant.

“With Castro’s passing, some of the heat may go out of the antagonism between Cuba and the United States, and between Cuba and Miami, which would be good for everyone,” said William M. LeoGrande, co-author of a book on U.S.-Cuba relations.

Castro’s death – which would once have thrown a question mark over Cuba’s future – seems unlikely to trigger a crisis as Raul Castro is firmly ensconced in power.

Fidel Castro latterly no longer held leadership posts. He wrote newspaper commentaries on world affairs and occasionally met foreign leaders, but lived in semi-seclusion.

Still, the passing of the man known to most Cubans as “El Comandante” – the commander – or simply “Fidel” leaves a huge void in the country he dominated for so long. It also underlines the generational change in Cuba’s communist leadership.

Raul Castro vows to step down when his term ends in 2018 and the Communist Party has elevated younger leaders to its Politburo, including 56-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, who is first vice president and the heir apparent.

REVOLUTIONARY ICON

A Jesuit-educated lawyer, Fidel Castro led the revolution that ousted U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista on Jan 1, 1959. Aged 32, he quickly took control of Cuba and sought to transform it into an egalitarian society.

His government improved the living conditions of the very poor, achieved health and literacy levels on a par with rich countries and rid Cuba of a powerful Mafia presence.

But he also tolerated little dissent, jailed opponents, seized private businesses and monopolized the media.

Hundreds of thousands of Castro’s opponents fled the island.

“The dictator Fidel Castro has died, the cause of many deaths in Cuba, Latin American and Africa,” Jose Daniel Ferrer, leader of the island’s largest dissident group, the Patriotic Union of Cuba, said on Twitter.

Many dissidents settled in Florida, influencing U.S. policy toward Cuba and plotting Castro’s demise. Some even trained in the Florida swamps for the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.

But they could never dislodge him.

Castro claimed he survived or evaded hundreds of assassination attempts, including some conjured up by the CIA.

In 1962, the United States imposed a damaging trade embargo that Castro blamed for most of Cuba’s ills, using it to his advantage to rally patriotic fury.

Over the years, he expanded his influence by sending Cuban troops into faraway wars, including 350,000 to fight in Africa. They provided critical support to a left-wing government in Angola and contributed to the independence of Namibia in a war that helped end apartheid in South Africa.

He also won friends by sending tens of thousands of Cuban doctors abroad to treat the poor and bringing young people from developing countries to train them as physicians.

‘HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE ME’

Born on August 13, 1926, in Biran in eastern Cuba, Castro was the son of a Spanish immigrant who became a wealthy landowner.

Angry at social conditions and Batista’s dictatorship, Castro launched his revolution on July 26, 1953, with a failed assault on the Moncada barracks in the eastern city of Santiago.

“History will absolve me,” he declared during his trial.

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison but was released in 1955 after a pardon that would come back to haunt Batista.

Castro went into exile in Mexico and prepared a small rebel army to fight Batista. It included Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who became his comrade in arms.

On Nov. 25, 1956, Castro and a ragtag band of 81 followers set sail from the Mexican port of Tuxpan aboard an overloaded yacht called “Granma,” reaching Cuba in early December.

Only 12, including Fidel, Raul and Guevara, escaped a government ambush when they landed in eastern Cuba.

Taking refuge in the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains, they built a guerrilla force of several thousand fighters who, along with urban rebel groups, defeated Batista’s military in just over two years.

Early on, at the height of the Cold War, Castro allied Cuba to the Soviet Union, which protected the Caribbean island and was its principal benefactor for three decades.

The alliance brought in $4 billion worth of aid annually, including everything from oil to guns, but also provoked the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States discovered Soviet missiles on the island.

Convinced that the United States was about to invade Cuba, Castro urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear attack.

Cooler heads prevailed. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. President John F. Kennedy agreed the Soviets would withdraw the missiles in return for a U.S. promise never to invade Cuba. The United States also secretly agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey.

‘SPECIAL PERIOD’

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, an isolated Cuba fell into an economic crisis that lasted for years known as the “special period.” Food, transport and basics such as soap were scarce and energy shortages led to frequent and long blackouts.

Castro undertook a series of tentative economic reforms to get through the crisis, including opening up to foreign tourism.

The economy improved when Venezuela’s late socialist leader, Hugo Chavez, who looked up to Castro as a hero, came to the rescue with cheap oil. Aid from communist-run China also helped, but Venezuelan support has eased since Chavez’s death in 2013.

Plagued by chronic economic problems, Cuba’s population of 11 million has endured years of hardship, although not the deep poverty, violent crime and government neglect of many other developing countries.

Cubans earn on average the equivalent of $20 a month and struggle to make ends meet even in an economy where education and health care are free and many basic goods and services are heavily subsidized.

For most Cubans, Castro has been the ubiquitous figure of their lives.

Many love him and share his faith in communism, and even some who abandoned their political belief still respect him.

“For everyone in Cuba and outside his death is very sad,” said Havana resident Luis Martinez. “It is very painful news.”

A Series of Pictures Highlighting a Genius Behind the Gloves – The Life of the Great Muhammad Ali

Former world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, whose record-setting boxing career, flair for showmanship and political stands made him one of the best-known figures of the 20th century, died on Friday aged 74.

Ali, who had long suffered from Parkinson’s syndrome which impaired his speech and made the once-graceful athlete almost a prisoner in his own body, died a day after he was admitted to a Phoenix-area hospital with a respiratory ailment.

Even so, Ali’s youthful proclamation of himself as “the greatest” rang true until the end for the millions of people worldwide who admired him for his courage both inside and outside the ring.

Along with a fearsome reputation as a fighter, he spoke out against racism, war and religious intolerance, while projecting an unshakeable confidence and humor that became a model for African-Americans at the height of the civil rights era.

“Muhammad Ali was one of the greatest human beings I have ever met,” said George Foreman, who lost to Ali in Zaire in a classic 1974 bout known as the “Rumble in Jungle.”

“No doubt he was one of the best people to have lived in this day and age. To put him as a boxer is an injustice.”

Ali enjoyed a popularity that transcended the world of sports, even though he rarely appeared in public in his later years.

“We lost an icon,” said Delson Dez, 28, a construction worker, who was holding up a poster of the fighter in Scottsdale, Arizona soon after Ali’s death was confirmed in a statement issued by his family late Friday evening.

“He talked trash but he backed it up,” Dez said.

Few could argue with his athletic prowess at his peak in the 1960s. With his dancing feet and quick fists, he could – as he put it – float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. He was the first person to win the heavyweight championship three times.

But Ali became much more than a colorful and interesting athlete. He spoke boldly against racism in the ’60s, as well as the Vietnam War.

During and after his championship reign, Ali met scores of world leaders and for a time he was considered the most recognizable person on earth, known even in remote villages far from the United States.

Ali’s diagnosis of Parkinson’s came about three years after he retired from boxing in 1981.

His influence extended far beyond boxing. He became the unofficial spokesman for millions of blacks and oppressed people around the world because of his refusal to compromise his opinions and stand up to white authorities.

“We lost a giant today. Boxing benefited from Muhammad Ali’s talents but not nearly as much as mankind benefited from his humanity,” said Manny Pacquiao, a boxer and politician in the Philippines, where Ali fought arch rival Joe Frazier for a third time in a brutal 1975 match dubbed the “Thrilla in Manila.”

In a realm where athletes often battle inarticulateness as well as their opponents, Ali was known as the Louisville Lip and loved to talk, especially about himself.

“Humble people, I’ve found, don’t get very far,” he once told a reporter.

His taunts could be brutal. “Joe Frazier is so ugly that when he cries, the tears turn around and go down the back of his head,” he once said. He also dubbed Frazier a ‘gorilla’ but later apologized and said it was all to promote the fight.

Once asked about his preferred legacy, Ali said: “I would like to be remembered as a man who won the heavyweight title three times, who was humorous and who treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him … who stood up for his beliefs … who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love.

“And if all that’s too much, then I guess I’d settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of his people. And I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.”

Ali was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on Jan. 17, 1942, as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., a name shared with a 19th century slavery abolitionist. He changed his name after his conversion to Islam.

Ali is survived by his wife, the former Lonnie Williams, who knew him when she was a child in Louisville, along with his nine children.

The death of a former Auschwitz guard days before his trial in Germany has dashed the hopes of two elderly Jewish survivors of Nazi rule who wanted to see justice for their parents, who perished while the guard was on duty at the death camp.

Israel Loewenstein, himself a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor, and Henry Foner, a 83-year-old chemist, talked to Reuters at their homes in Israel a day before news of the death of Ernst Tremmel, the former guard, emerged.

They had hoped Tremmel would face justice late in his life.

“But then again we don’t know if he would have even told the truth about Auschwitz – many of the accused don’t, after all,” Loewenstein told Reuters on Friday after learning of Tremmel’s death.

German courts are hearing two other Auschwitz cases. The trials of 95-year-old Hubert Zafke, a former Auschwitz paramedic, and of 94-year-old Reinhold Hanning, a former guard at the death camp, have already started. Both have remained silent on the accusations so far.

“It’s a good thing (Germany) is doing it, but it doesn’t touch my heart somehow,” Foner, who was evacuated from Germany to Britain with other Jewish children in 1939 as part of a Jewish initiative, said at his home in Jerusalem.

He had hoped to see justice done in the case of Tremmel, but said: “There can never be closure. Closure to me is meaningless – you can’t get back what has been taken.”

Tremmel was a member of the Nazi SS guard team at the death camp in occupied Poland from November 1942 to June 1943. His trial had been scheduled to start on April 13, but a court spokesman said on Thursday he had died at the age of 93.

Although Tremmel was not directly involved in the mass killings at Auschwitz, German prosecutors said he had helped in the murder of at least 1,075 people during his stint of some eight months at the death camp. They said he volunteered to join the SS and started working as an Auschwitz guard at the age of 19.

Tremmel’s platoon was regularly charged with overseeing the camp’s ‘selection process’, forming a human chain around the arriving deportation trains to prevent new arrivals from escaping before they were either selected for forced labour or sent off to be killed in the camp’s gas chambers.

Loewenstein, who survived the Holocaust in various forced labour camps, remembered the selection process when he arrived at the death camp in March 1943, at the age of 18.

“We came to Auschwitz in the middle of the night after four days on a train without food,” he recalled, speaking German at his home in Yad Hana, a former kibbutz in northern Israel.

“Suddenly, the doors were torn open, headlights were blazing, German shepherds were barking and we only heard the guards yell ‘Get out! Get out!'”

From the group of 100 people Loewenstein arrived with in Auschwitz, only 17 survived.

Loewenstein’s parents, Paula and Walter, as well as Max Lichtwitz, the father of Foner, arrived on the same deportation train from Berlin on Dec. 9, 1942. All three were selected to be killed and died in the death camp’s gas chambers the next day.

 (Editing by Richard Balmforth – by Tina Bellon) – Reuters News