Obituaries in the News

-- Nikki Bacharach

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) _ Nikki Bacharach, daughter of Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickinson, died Thursday. She was 40.

Bacharach committed suicide at her condo, said Linda Dozoretz, a spokeswoman for the family. She suffered from Asperger's Disorder, a form of autism.

Bacharach died of suffocation using a plastic bag and helium, said Mike Feiler of the Ventura County coroner's office.

Born prematurely in 1966, Lea Nikki Bacharach studied geology at Cal Lutheran University, but could not pursue a career in the field because of poor eyesight.

___

Michael Browning

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) _ Michael Browning, a journalist with The Palm Beach Post whose career spanned three decades across several continents with several Florida newspapers, died Saturday. He was 58.

Browning died of liver failure at a Gainesville hospital, according to the Post.

Browning began his career in 1975 with The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and later spent 20 years at The Miami Herald, nine of them in Asia as the newspaper's Beijing bureau chief. He traveled extensively, reporting throughout India, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, South Korea and South Africa. Browning spoke fluent Latin, Greek and Mandarin.

He joined the Post in 1999. In 2004, he won Florida's top honor for newspaper writing, the Paul Hansell Award, for stories in the Post that included a series of articles about caring for his ailing mother until her death.

Browning was born in Valdosta, Ga., on Oct. 28, 1948, and later moved with his family to Jacksonville in 1950. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University, where he majored in Latin, minored in Greek and planned to become a teacher until the U.S. Army drafted him out of graduate school in 1972.