Mark Chavunduka, 37, a Zimbabwean journalist and publisher whose arrest and subsequent torture helped expose his government's increasing repression of dissent, died yesterday after a prolonged illness. The cause was believed to be unrelated to the effects of his weeklong detention and torture in 1999.
Mr. Chavunduka had often complained to friends and colleagues of recurring nightmares of the beatings and electric shocks he received at a military intelligence facility outside Harare.
He and a colleague, Ray Choto, were detained after reporting in the independent Zimbabwe Standard newspaper about disaffection in the military and a possible coup plot against President Robert G. Mugabe's government. The government denied the report and ignored court orders to either free Mr. Chavunduka or press charges against him.
After the men were released, authorities refused to prosecute torturers Mr. Chavunduka identified.
His torture brought the world's attention to the government's human rights violations and its efforts to suppress criticism. Charges against the pair for allegedly publishing a false report liable to create alarm and despondency were later dropped.
Mr. Chavunduka received several international awards for courageous reporting. In April, he took over a controlling share in an independent magazine publishing business.
Hilary Bader, 50, an Emmy-winning television writer who worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Superman: The Animated Series, died of breast cancer yesterday in Duarte, Calif.
She was nominated seven times for a daytime Emmy Award. She shared the award last year for the animated Batman Beyond, for which she had already won an Emmy. She also won an Emmy for The New Batman/Superman Adventures.
Ms. Bader was born in New York and studied mime in Paris. She toured the United States performing story theater called African Folk Tales. She moved to Hollywood to write for television, pitched a couple of scripts to Star Trek and got hired as a Writers Guild intern.
She also wrote for the shows Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Xena: Warrior Princess and Silk Stalkings, and created 38 comic books for DC Comics and several Web episodes of Gotham Girls and Red Knuckles Gym.
Judy Sam Trejo, 62, a northern Nevada Paiute who worked to preserve her tribe's language through education, storytelling and song, died Saturday of undetermined causes.
"Judy was indeed an important figure in both song and language," said Catherine Fowler, an anthropology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "She introduced curriculum in the Paiute language - was one of the first to try to teach the language in a public school setting in Nevada."
Born in Alturas, Calif., she grew up on the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Reservation north of Winnemucca. She earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education and a master's degree in counseling from the College of Idaho, and returned to Nevada to teach first and second grades at the Walker River Indian Reservation in Schurz for 20 years.
She also recorded Native American music, including the award-winning albums Circle Dance Songs of the Paiute and Shoshone and Stick Game Songs of the Paiute.