Princess Leia: Actress Carrie Fisher, known for playing Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, died yesterday of the effects of a heart attack suffered on an airline flight from London to Los Angeles on Dec. 23rd.

Playing the one character, Princess Leia, made her a cultural icon.

The daughter of the late crooner Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds, Fisher had a turbulent Hollywood life. Her on-again, off-again romance with musician Paul Simon was wrapped around a brief engagement to comedian Dan Aykroyd. She broke off with Aykroyd to marry Simon for just one year.

Fisher later had a daughter with CAA agent Bryan Lourd, who left her for another man.

Fisher had terrible trouble with drugs and alcohol, and eventually was diagnosed as bi-polar. She was a prolific writer and wrote a best-selling, semi-autobiographical novel, Postcards from the Edge, that was turned into a movie. She once said, “Everyone drives somebody crazy. I just have a bigger car.”

Dopeski: Russian sports officials have admitted to the NY Times that they ran a vast doping operation that involved winter athletes in Sochi and other Olympic athletes as well. “It was an institutional conspiracy,” Anna Antseliovich, the acting director general of Russia’s national anti-doping agency, told the paper’s Rebecca Ruiz.

With suspicions confirmed two years after the Sochi Olympics, the entire Russian track team was barred from the Rio Olympics for doping.

During the Sochi Olympics, the conspiracy involved both laboratory workers and the Federal Security Service, a successor to the legendary KGB. But despite the involvement of the state security service, the Russians still deny that the doping scheme was state-sponsored.

Nation: Speaking at the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii yesterday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed that Japan would never wage war again. “We must never repeat the horrors of war again,” Abe said. “This is the solemn vow we, the people of Japan, have taken.” Abe did not say he’s sorry for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, but he is the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit the memorial over the sunken American battleship.

Real News: In an era when newspapers are struggling to survive and fake news websites are destroying credibility, some major papers are thriving and growing. The Washington Post, which was bought by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2013, is adding 60 journalists to its staff. The Post‘s online traffic had increased by 50 percent in the past year, and new subscriptions by 75 percent.

The NY Times has added 132,000 new subscribers just since the election while The LA Times and The Wall Street Journal also report record subscription growth.

Chew on This: A Major League Baseball dugout after a game is one of the most repulsive places in the world, its floored spattered with tobacco juice. Sometimes during the World Series, the cutaway shots are a spit-fest. Baseball players use both chewing tobacco and dip, sometimes with fatal results. The San Diego Padres great player Tony Gwynn died of salivary gland cancer at 54.

Major League Baseball has quietly taken a step against so-called “smokeless tobacco” with a clause in the new player contract that forbids players entering the league from using the stuff. The contract is good for only five years, but if the clause is extended, it could take 10 years or more to flush tobaccy out of the dugout.

The Obit Page: Richard Adams, the British novelist who wrote Watership Down about humanized rabbits living out tales of peril and courage in a dangerous world, has died at age 96.

End Note: For the first time in months, a certain person gets no mention in The Rooney Report. No one is more relieved than the editorial staff.

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