Terry Anderson, AP reporter held captive for years, has died.

Terry Anderson, the globe-trotting Associated Press correspondent who became one of America’s longest-held hostages after he was snatched from a street in war-torn Lebanon in 1985 and held for nearly seven years, has died at 76.

Anderson, who chronicled his abduction and torturous imprisonment by Islamic militants in his best-selling 1993 memoir “Den of Lions,” died on Sunday in at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson.

The cause of death was unknown, though his daughter said Anderson recently had heart surgery.

After returning to the United States in 1991, Anderson led a peripatetic life, giving public speeches, teaching journalism at several prominent universities and, at various times, operating a blues bar, Cajun restaurant, horse ranch and gourmet restaurant. (AP)

Ontario spending on new press space!

The Ontario government is spending about $310,000 on a new space for press conferences, which opposition parties say duplicates a room that already exists at the legislature and will mean less access for the media. 

The Progressive Conservative government used its new "communications centre" this week for the finance minister's budget press conference and a technical briefing for journalists.

But it now intends on using the room, in the basement of a legislative precinct building connected to the main legislature via a tunnel, for all on-site government press conferences, senior government officials told The Canadian Press.

That's despite there being a room that already exists for that purpose.

The media studio inside the main legislative building has for decades hosted press conferences by government ministers, opposition members and advocacy groups.

But that space is a neutral one operated by the Speaker of the Legislature on behalf of the press gallery, and journalists are not limited in the number of questions they can ask a minister.

Not so in the new government communications centre. Journalists there will be allowed to ask one question and one follow-up, the sources said, similar to the format of off-site press conferences with the premier or government ministers. (CP)