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Meshach Taylor, who played a lovable ex-convict surrounded by boisterous Southern belles on the sitcom "Designing 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 on "Designing 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 Montegna, 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.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore@ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier

FORTALEZA, Brazil (AP) — Klaas Jan Huntelaar and Wesley Sneijder scored late goals Sunday to give the Netherlands a 2-1 victory over Mexico and a spot in the World Cup quarterfinals.

Huntelaar, who came on as a 76th-minute substitute, scored the winning goal from the penalty spot deep in injury time after Rafael Marquez brought down Arjen Robben in the area.

Giovani Dos Santos gave the Mexicans the lead in the 48th minute, but Sneijder equalized for the Dutch in the 88th.

Netherlands coach Louis van Gaal had said his team would have to battle the weather and Mexico in the steamy Arena Castelao, and in the end his players outlasted their opponents in the withering afternoon heat.

It was so warm in Fortaleza that referee Pedro Proenca called for cooling breaks in each half so players could rehydrate.

The Mexicans had conceded only one goal in three group matches and looked like they would keep another clean sheet until the late collapse.

It was heartbreak again for Mexico, which has now reached the second stage of the World Cup six straight times without winning. The last time the team made the quarterfinals was when it hosted the tournament in 1986.

Mexico goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa had kept his team in the match with two great saves to preserve the lead in the second half, but he was beaten by Sneijder's powerful drive and guessed wrong when diving in an attempt to stop Huntelaar's penalty.

With his team a goal down and facing elimination, Van Gaal brought on attacker Memphis Depay and switched his team to the trusted 4-3-3 attacking formation.

The move worked as the Dutch poured forward and finally beat Ochoa.

It was the fourth straight win for the Netherlands at the World Cup after routing defending champion Spain 5-1 and beating Australia 3-2 and Chile 2-0 in Group B.

The Dutch will next face either Costa Rica or Greece in the quarterfinals on Saturday in Salvador.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — NASA has tested new technology designed to bring spacecraft — and one day even astronauts — safely down to Mars, with the agency declaring the experiment a qualified success even though a giant parachute got tangled on the way down.

Saturday's $150 million experiment is the first of three involving the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator vehicle. Tests are being conducted at high altitude on Earth to mimic descent through the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet.

A balloon hauled the saucer-shaped craft 120,000 feet into the sky from a Navy missile range on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Then, the craft's own rocket boosted it to more than 30 miles high at supersonic speeds.

As the craft prepared to fall back to earth, a doughnut-shaped tube around it expanded like a Hawaiian puffer fish, creating atmospheric drag to dramatically slow it down from Mach 4, or four times the speed of sound.

Then the parachute unfurled — but only partially. The vehicle made a hard landing in the Pacific Ocean.

Engineers won't look at the parachute problem as a failure but as a way to learn more and apply that knowledge during future tests, said NASA engineer Dan Coatta with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"In a way, that's a more valuable experience for us than if everything had gone exactly according to plan," he said.

A ship was sent to recover a "black box" designed to separate from the vehicle and float. Outfitted with a GPS beacon, the box contains the crucial flight data that scientists are eager to analyze.

NASA investigators expect to know more once they have analyzed data from the box, which they expect to retrieve Sunday along with the vehicle and parachute. They also expect to recover high resolution video.

"We've got a lot to look at," Ian Clark, principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told reporters on a teleconference.

Since the twin Viking spacecraft landed on the red planet in 1976, NASA has relied on a parachute to slow landers and rovers.

But the latest experiment involved both the drag-inducing device and a parachute that was 110 feet in diameter — twice as large as the one that carried the 1-ton Curiosity rover in 2011.

Cutting-edge technologies are needed to safely land larger payloads on Mars, enabling delivery of supplies and materials "and to pave the way for future human explorers," a NASA statement said.

Technology development "is the surest path to Mars," said Michael Gazarik, head of space technology at NASA headquarters.

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Associated Press writers Alicia Chang and Amy Taxin contributed to this report.

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