Obituaries in the news

James Brady

NEW YORK (AP) _ James Brady, the celebrity columnist who created the New York Post's gossipy Page Six, died Monday. He was 80.

His death was announced by Parade magazine, where he wrote the celebrity profile column "In Step With" for nearly 25 years.

Brady worked until his death on Monday. The cause of his death hasn't been announced.

His last column will appear Feb. 15. It will feature actor Kevin Bacon.

He was hired by media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 1974 to edit the then-new weekly Star magazine. He later was an associate publisher at the New York Post.

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John Updike

NEW YORK (AP) _ John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday. He was 76.

Updike, best known for his four "Rabbit" novels, died of lung cancer at a hospice near his home in Beverly Farms, Mass., according to his longtime publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.

A literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir "Self-Consciousness" and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams.

He released more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s, winning virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for "Rabbit Is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest," and two National Book Awards.

Although himself deprived of a Nobel, he did bestow it upon one of his fictional characters, Henry Bech, the womanizing, egotistical Jewish novelist who collected the literature prize in 1999.

His settings ranged from the court of "Hamlet" to postcolonial Africa, but his literary home was the American suburb, the great new territory of mid-century fiction.

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Ramaswamy Venkataraman

NEW DELHI (AP) _ Ramaswamy Venkataraman, who was India's eighth president and helped draft the country's constitution, died Tuesday. He was 98.

Venkataraman served as president from 1987 to 1992 and before that was also the country's vice president. He was a member of the Constituent Assembly that wrote India's constitution, which was adopted in 1950. He was also a member of the country's first Parliament.

"He served with distinction in various capacities in public life and ultimately rose to occupy the highest office of the nation," President Pratibha Patil said in a condolence message released to the media. "In his passing away, the nation has lost a true patriot and a distinguished luminary."

Venkataraman was admitted to the hospital on Jan. 12 with complaints of delirium and dehydration, and his condition progressively deteriorated, a government statement said.

His wife and son-in-law were with him when he died, Brig. A.K. Sharma, a spokesman at the army hospital where he was treated, told the Press Trust of India news agency.