'Designing Women' Star Meshach Taylor Dies At 67

'Designing Women' Star Meshach Taylor Dies At 67

Meshach Taylor  who played a lovable ex-convict surrounded by boisterous Southern belles on the sitcomDesigning Women and appeared in numerous other TV and film roles, died of cancer at age 67, his agent said Sunday.

Taylor died Saturday at his home near Los Angeles, according to agent Dede Binder.

Taylor got an Emmy nod for his portrayal of Anthony Bouvier onDesigning Women from 1986 to 1993. Then he costarred for four seasons on another successful comedy, Dave's World, as the best friend of a newspaper humor columnist played by the series' star, Harry Anderson.

Other series included the cult favorite Buffalo Bill and the popular Nickelodeon comedy Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide.

Taylor's movie roles included a flamboyant window dresser in the 1987 comedy-romance Mannequin as well as Damien: Omen II.

He guested on many series including Hannah Montana, The Unit,Hill Street Blues, Barney Miller, Lou Grant, The Drew Carey Show, and, in an episode that aired in January, Criminal Minds, which stars Joe Mantegna, with whom Taylor performed early in his career as a fellow member of Chicago's Organic Theater Company. Taylor also had been a member of that city's Goodman Theatre.

The Boston-born Taylor started acting in community shows in New Orleans, where his father was dean of students at Dillard University. He continued doing roles in Indianapolis after his father moved to Indiana University as dean of the college of arts and sciences.

After college, Taylor got a job at an Indianapolis radio station, where he rose from a "flunky job" to Statehouse reporter, he recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 1989.

"It was interesting for a while," he said. "But once you get involved in Indiana politics you see what a yawn it is."

Resuming his acting pursuit, he set up a black arts theater to keep kids off the street, then joined the national touring company of Hair. His acting career was launched.

After Hair, he became a part of the burgeoning theater world in Chicago, where he stayed until 1979 before heading for Los Angeles.

Taylor played the assistant director in Buffalo Bill, the short-lived NBC sitcom about an arrogant and self-centered talk show host played by Dabney Coleman. It lasted just one season, 1983-84, disappointing its small but fervent following.

Seemingly his gig on Designing Women could have been even more short-lived. It was initially a one-shot.

"It was for the Thanksgiving show, about halfway through the first season," Taylor said. But producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason told him if the character clicked with audiences he could stay.

It did. He spun comic gold with co-stars Jean Smart, Dixie Carter, Annie Potts and Delta Burke, and never left.

Meanwhile, his real life worked its way into one episode.

"We were doing some promotional work in Lubbock, Texas, and somehow Delta Burke and I got booked into the same hotel suite," he said. They alerted their respective significant others to the mix-up, then muddled through with the shared accommodations.

"When we got back I told Linda, and she put it into a show: We got stranded at a motel during a blizzard and ended up in the same bed!"

Taylor is survived by his four children and his wife, Bianca Ferguson.

China calls U.S. bid to name street for Nobel peace laureate a 'farce'

China on Wednesday dismissed as a "farce" and a "smear" a vote by a United States panel of lawmakers to rename a Washington road in front of its embassy after imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.

Republican Frank Wolf from Virginia submitted the amendment to the annual State Department spending bill, instructing Secretary of State John Kerry to rename the street as "No.1, Liu Xiaobo Plaza", the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

"Some people from the United States have used so-called human rights and the Liu Xiaobo case to engage in this meaningless sensationalism," China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing.

"It is nothing more than an attempt to smear China. We think this is purely a farce."

Liu, 58, a veteran dissident involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests that were brutally crushed by the army, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 on charges of subversion for organizing a petition urging an end to one-party rule.

Hua reiterated China's stance that Liu had violated Chinese law. Last month, China criticized as "provocative and ignorant" a group of U.S. lawmakers who called for the street to be named for Liu.

The United States and the European Union have repeatedly called for Liu's release and the removal of curbs on his wife, Liu Xia, who is rarely allowed out of her home and is almost never allowed to receive visitors.

She has not been convicted of any crime.

U.N. report: Our oceans are trashed with plastic

 A series of new reports are raising concerns about the damage plastic waste is doing to oceans -- harming marine animals, destroying sensitive ecosystems, and contaminating the fish we eat.

But experts say that the solution to the problem isn't in the ocean -- it's on land.

The United Nations Environment Programme, as well as the NGOsGlobal Ocean Commission and Plastic Disclosure Project, released reports on Monday ringing the alarm bell about the environmental impact of debris on marine life.

Plastic waste in oceans is causing $13 billion of damage each year, according to the UNEP report, and that figure could be much higher. Worldwide plastic production is projected to reach 33 billion tons by 2050, and plastic makes up 80% of litter on oceans and shorelines.

"Plastics undoubtedly play a crucial role in modern life, but the environmental impacts of the way we use them cannot be ignored," said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner in a press release.

Ten to 20 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year, from litter, runoff from poorly managed landfills, and other sources. Once it's in the water, plastic does not degrade but instead breaks into smaller pieces and swirls in massive ocean gyres, creating soupy surfaces peppered with the material

Scientists are especially worried about the growing prevalence of tiny microplastics which are smaller than 5 millimeters. These include microbeads, which are used in toothpaste, gels, facial cleansers and other consumer goods. Microplastics aren't filtered by sewage treatment plants, and can be ingested by marine animals with deadly effect.

Ocean debris isn't just an environmental issue -- it also complicated the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 earlier this year, as floating debris confused satellite images.

What can be done?

It's expensive and ineffective to clean up existing marine debris. Picking trash off beaches or sweeping it from the ocean surface "does nothing to fix the problem at the source," said Doug Woodring, the co-founder of Ocean Recovery Alliance, the NGO behind the Plastic Disclosure Project.

"It's not just an ocean problem, it's a business and a municipal issue," Woodring said. "The ocean is just downstream of our activities. The real solution is upstream at the producer and user end."

Governments can help solve the problem by regulating the use of plastics and creating infrastructure to recycle them. For example, dozens of nations have banned plastic bags at supermarkets or restricted their use.

That's a "good start," said Ada Kong, a campaigner at Greenpeace. But they can go further, she said. "Governments should enforce laws to regulate the cosmetic manufactures to label the ingredients (of consumer goods), including all the microplastics."

The general public can also be conscious about their plastic footprint by simply purchasing goods without a lot of excess plastic packaging. People should also separate their plastic from other waste and recycle it, Woodring said.

From waste to resource

Companies that produce plastic goods have perhaps the biggest opportunity to make a difference, Woodring said. They can engage their customers with rebate or deposit programs, giving them incentives to bring back plastic for recycling.

"Everything from bottles to food packaging can be made from recycled plastic," Woodring said. "The technology is there today to reuse it."

His organization is hosting a "Plasticity Forum" in New York City on Tuesday featuring presentations about how to creatively reuse plastic.

Plastic isn't just waste -- it's "a valuable material, pound-for-pound worth more than steel, and we're just not capitalizing on it today," Woodring said.

The new reports come on the eve of the first-ever United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi, a forum for environmental ministers, scientists, and others to discuss strategies to combat climate change and other environmental problems. An ocean conference hosted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington, D.C. last week also focused on marine pollution.

Perhaps the greatest sign of the problem is the rapidly-growing Great Pacific Trash Patch, a massive sheet plastic and other debris that circles in a gyre across the ocean.