tributes

Actor Morgan Freeman has led tributes at the annual Academy Awards ceremony to fellow Hollywood star Gene Hackman, whose death last month is under police investigation.

Gene Hackman's daughters and granddaughter say they are "devastated" and will "miss him sorely", as they led tributes to the movie star who has died aged 95.

In times past visiting dignitaries would give emperors gifts and tributes.

Family and friends feared that the killers or their allies, who remain at large, would desecrate any memorial, as they did to tributes that cropped up shortly after his death.

The irreplaceable Barbara Cook put her interpretive stamp on Sondheim’s songbook in her concert tributes, reanimating musical treasures through her own introspective moonlight.