New Zealander Tom Aspell - a veteran foreign correspondent for NBC News in the US - has died following a two year battle with lung cancer. He was 62.
Aspell, who passed away on Monday, began is journalism career as a scriptwriter and cameraman with Visnews in 1970, working first in London and then Hong Kong.
He then moved to Southeast Asia, where he worked as a cameraman until 1975.
According to his biography on the NBC website, when Saigon fell to communist forces on April 30, 1975, Aspell was one of the few foreign journalists who stayed behind.
From 1975 to 1978, Aspell covered conflicts in the Middle East as a freelance cameraman, before joining CBS in 1978 as a cameraman covering Beirut. He then worked as a producer for ABC in Beirut from 1981 until 1983.