Larry Harmon, who played Bozo the Clown for more than 50 years, has died of congestive heart failure at age 83, his spokesman confirmed. Harmon, a native of Ohio, died at his home in Los Angeles, spokesman Jerry Digney said. Harmon was not the original Bozo, but he portrayed the flame-haired clown in numerous appearances over the years.

UK - Two bungling funeral bosses from York who hid the body of a dead baby in an elderly woman’s coffin have had their sentences slashed. Mark Eshelby and Graeme Skidmore, former colleagues at Co-operative Funeral Services in Cromwell Road, were both sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, suspended for two years, and fined £5,000 each, at York Crown Court last June after admitting conspiring to prevent a proper burial.

COPENHAGEN — The gravestone of Denmark's famed story teller Hans Christian Andersen was vandalised along with other tombs at a cemetery in Copenhagen, police said on Wednesday. The tomb of the author, who penned stories including "The Little Mermaid", was covered in messages referring to a residence for young people razed in March last year, said police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch. The city of Copenhagen recently cleaned graffiti off the wall surrounding the cemetery and, according to Munch, the vandalism that took place overnight Tuesday was in response to this.

NEW ORLEANS — In the midst of death, one funeral home has constant evidence of life. Its sweeping staircase has been the backdrop for photographs of Mardi Gras krewes, prom couples, homecoming queens and bride after bride after bride. "Thousands of brides have had their wedding pictures on our staircase," said Joe Daigle, manager of J.E. Hixson & Sons Funeral Home in Lake Charles, about 320 kilometres west of New Orleans.

Bedford, Ohio -- John Walters loves the feeling he gets from fixing up aging gravestones. "It's like you're saving history and artwork from more than 100 years ago," he said. "It seems like you are righting a wrong. "So many times, you look at the surnames on the graves and then look at the nearby roads - roads that were named after these people, They are the people who carved out this area." Walters, a gravestone restorer, was  summoned to work at Bedford Cemetery during the last full week in June. "It can be slow, pains-taking work," Walters said.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- England's enigmatic Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, new research indicates. Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday. And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.

Los Angeles, CA (AHN) -- Two California men were indicted on federal felony charges Friday, accused of dealing in human body parts. Authorities say the former head of the University of California, Los Angeles' cadaver program, Henry Reid, 58, sold the cadavers and body parts that were donated to the program to business man Ernest Nelson, 50, who then sold the parts to medical, pharmaceutical and hospital research companies.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A painstaking two-year investigation to determine which of two skulls belonged to Friedrich Schiller has found neither is a match, prolonging a 180-year-old mystery over the celebrated German poet's remains. A team of international experts came to their surprise conclusion after comparing DNA samples from the two skulls in question to material from the graves of the poet's relatives.