PASSINGS

Maria Amelia Lopez

Blogger began when she was 95

Maria Amelia Lopez, 97, a Spanish great-grandmother who described herself as the world’s oldest blogger -- and became a Web sensation as she mused on events current and past -- died May 20 in her hometown of Muxia in Spain’s northwest Galicia region, according to her blog amis95.blogspot.com. No cause of death was given.

Lopez started blogging in 2006 after her grandson -- “who is very stingy,” she wrote -- created the site as a present for her 95th birthday. The blog went on to attract a huge following, with more than 1.7 million hits, as Lopez shared her thoughts on everything from life in Spain under the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which she criticized.

Lopez said discovering the Internet and communicating with people all over the world changed her life, and she urged elderly people everywhere to get wired. “It took 20 years off my life,” Lopez wrote. “My bloggers are the joy of my life. I did not know there was so much goodness in the world.”

Yehoshua Zettler

Jewish militant and assassin boss

Yehoshua Zettler, 91, one of the founders of Israel’s LEHI movement, also known as the Stern Gang, and the mastermind of the assassination of a top United Nations envoy in 1948, died May 20 in Israel after a suffering a stroke.

Zettler spent seven years in prison for his role in a bank robbery. He was most famous, however, for planning the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem in September 1948.

Bernadotte was a member of the Swedish royal family and, as the U.N. envoy, was responsible for mediating between Jews and Arabs to try to stop the war that followed Israel’s creation. Bernadotte angered LEHI members by suggesting that the boundaries of the 1947 partition plan be revised to put Jerusalem under U.N. control and hand Israel’s Negev desert to Jordan.

As head of the Swedish Red Cross during World War II, he negotiated with top Nazi Heinrich Himmler to save thousands of Jews from concentration camps. LEHI commanders, however, considered him a British agent who cooperated with the Nazis. Zettler planned and supervised the assassination, and the killing was carried out by Yehoshua Cohen.

Zettler was born in Palestine on July 15, 1917, at Kfar Saba, a settlement north of Tel Aviv. After the war of independence, he settled in Tel Aviv, where he owned a gas station.

-- times staff and wire reports news.obits@latimes.com