obituaries

Rest in peace my friend, I'm sure you're already making them laugh up there!

The suicide of actor and comedian Robin Williams touched off a national conversation about depression. The overdose deaths of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, model Peaches Geldof and heavy metal frontman Dave Brockie were grim reminders of the scourge of drug use.

LONDON (AP) -- British singer Joe Cocker is dead at age 70.

LONDON (AP) -- P.D. James took the classic British detective story into tough modern terrain, complete with troubled relationships and brutal violence, and never accepted that crime writing was second-class literature.

LONDON (AP) -- English clarinet player Acker Bilk, who beat the Beatles and other British rockers to the top of the U.S. music charts with the instrumental "Stranger on the Shore," has died at the age of 85.

NEW YORK (AP) — Emmy-winning actress and singer Polly Bergen, who in a long career played the terrorized wife in the original "Cape Fear" and the first woman president in "Kisses for My President," died Saturday, according to her publicist. She was 84.

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire heir to the Mellon banking and oil fortune and a newspaper publisher who funded libertarian and conservative causes and various projects to discredit President Bill Clinton, has died. He was 82.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Howard Baker's question sliced to the core of Watergate: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

DOVER, Del. (AP) -- Police Lt. David Spicer, who dons protective body armor as part of his daily routine, will forever be grateful for the woman whose discovery of Kevlar fiber saved his life more than a decade ago - and has protected thousands of other officers and soldiers.

Horace Silver, a pianist, composer and band leader with a tireless inventiveness who influenced generations of jazzmen with his distinctive hard bop sound, has died. He was 85.