SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) – Nick Barone, the “Fighting Marine” who lost a heavyweight title bout in 1950 to Ezzard Charles, died Sunday, a funeral home said. He was 79.

Barone had a 47-11-1 record. His most famous fight came as a heavyweight on Dec. 5, 1950, when he met Charles in the champion’s hometown of Cincinnati.

It was Charles’ first defense of the title he took from Joe Louis three months earlier.

Charles was heavily favored, but Barone lasted until the 11th round when he was knocked down for the first time in his career. He got up, but the referee stopped the fight.

He fought just five times after meeting Charles and lost four of those bouts.

At 16, Barone took his older brother’s birth certificate and enlisted in the Marines. He went on to fight in World War II and saw action at Iwo Jima.

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S. Hugh Dillin

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Former federal Judge S. Hugh Dillin, who oversaw the desegregation of the Indianapolis schools during more than three decades on the bench, died Monday. He was 91.

Dillin died in Cambridge, Mass., where a daughter lived, court officials said.

He was nominated as a district court judge for the southern Indiana district in 1961 by President Kennedy. He remained in that position until 1994, when he went to part-time status for several years.

Perhaps Dillin’s most controversial case was his 1973 order that the Indianapolis Public Schools begin busing students between schools to achieve racial desegregation. He expanded that busing order eight years later by requiring the Indianapolis district to send 5,600 black students a year to six suburban Marion County school districts.

That busing continued until Dillin approved an agreement in 1998 to phase out the busing of students to the suburban schools.

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Lois Swisher Duncan

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Lois Swisher Duncan, the wife of one congressman and mother of another, died at her home Tuesday. She was 89.

She was the wife of Rep. John J. Duncan, who served in the U.S. House from 1964 until his death in 1988, and the mother of Rep. John J. “Jimmy” Duncan Jr., who succeeded his father and still serves Tennessee’s 2nd District.

Bob Griffitts, the younger Duncan’s chief of staff, said Lois Duncan’s health had been deteriorating in recent years.

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Lennart Meri

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) – Former President Lennart Meri, a writer, film director and statesman whose relentless struggle against communist oppression helped the Baltic nation break free from the Soviet Union in 1991, died overnight, the presidential office said Tuesday. He was 76.

Meri became Estonia’s first president after the country regained independence, serving from 1992-2001. He died at a Tallinn hospital after a long illness, the presidential office said.

He was widely credited for remaining tough with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in negotiations on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Estonia in 1994.

Meri and his family were deported to Siberia after the Soviet invasion of Estonia during World War II.

The family survived and returned to Estonia, where Meri studied history at the University of Tartu, worked as a theater dramatist and, later, as a producer of radio plays and films.

He was one of the leaders of the Baltic country’s independence movement, known as the “singing revolution.” After a brief period as ambassador to Finland, Meri was elected as president in October 1992 and was re-elected in 1996.

However, Meri’s health started to deteriorate and in August 2005 he had surgery to remove a brain tumor and was treated at hospitals for long intervals.

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Peter Tomarken

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) – Peter Tomarken, who was known as host of the hit 1980s game show “Press Your Luck,” in which contestants often shouted the slogan “big bucks, no whammies!” died Monday in a plane crash. He was 63.

Tomarken and his wife, Kathleen Abigail Tomarken, 41, were killed when their small plane crashed in Santa Monica Bay shortly after takeoff on a charity flight, authorities said.

The plane was on its way to San Diego to ferry a medical patient to the UCLA Medical Center, said Doug Griffith, a spokesman for Angel Flight West, a nonprofit which provides free air transportation for needy patients. Tomarken, the pilot, was a volunteer for the group.

His agent, Fred Wostbrock, said his client’s first game show was “Hit Man!,” which ran 13 weeks on NBC, followed by the four-year hit “Press Your Luck” on CBS.

In 1987, Tomarken was on ABC with a show called “Bargain Hunters,” and then went to the syndicated “Wipe-Out” in 1990. He returned to game shows in 2000 with the program “Paranoia.”

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