MILESTONES

By KATHLEEN ADAMS, MELISSA AUGUST, NICK CATOGGIO, LINA LOFARO, MICHAEL QUINN, JEFFERY RUBIN, ALAIN SANDERS, ANASTASIA TOUFEXIS AND SIDNEY URQUHART

BORN. To LIAM NEESON, 43, actor, and his wife NATASHA RICHARDSON, 32, actress; a boy, Micheal Richard Antonio Neeson, named for Michael Collins, the Irish Republican Army founder, whom Neeson is currently portraying in a bio pic; in Dublin.

ADOPTED. By CONNIE CHUNG, 48, TV newscaster (currently looking for opportunities), and her husband MAURY POVICH, 56, talk-show host; a boy, Matthew Jay Povich, her first child, his third; in New York City.

UNDER TREATMENT. MICKEY MANTLE, 63, baseball legend; for "light rejection" of his recently acquired liver transplant; in Dallas. Doctors put the beloved former Yankee on steroids and say his prognosis is still good.

SENTENCED. WILLIAM ARAMONY, 68, ex-president of United Way; to seven years in prison, for dipping into the charity's treasury in order to finance his tastes in foreign travel and domestic girlfriends.

DIED. GROUP CAPTAIN PETER TOWNSEND, 80, British war hero and tragic romantic figure; in Paris. A decorated fighter pilot, Townsend downed 11 enemy planes during World War II. But he lost his postwar battle with the royal family and Queen Elizabeth, who disapproved of her sister Princess Margaret's romance with the dashing but divorced royal attendant. "She could have married me," Townsend wrote in his 1978 autobiography, "only if she had been prepared to give up everything." She wasn't. Townsend went into tasteful Continental exile in 1955, forging careers as a disc jockey, wine buyer and U.N. adviser.

DIED. LAURENCE MCKINLEY GOULD, 98, geologist; in Tucson, Arizona. From 1928 to 1930, Gould trekked across part of Antarctica as second-in-command to Richard Byrd on Byrd's first expedition to the continent. Today maps of Antarctica are replete with Gould's name: Mount Gould, Gould Bay, Gould Glacier, Gould Coast.