MILESTONES

BORN. To YASSER ARAFAT, 65, Palestinian leader, and SUHA ARAFAT, 33; a daughter, Zahwa; in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

FACING SURGERY. SAM DONALDSON, 61, scowling telejournalist; to remove a malignant melanoma; at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

DIED. CHARLIE RICH, 62, singer whose proto-Kenny Rogers ballads like The Most Beautiful Girl and Behind Closed Doors fused Nashville to Vegas in the '70s; from a blood clot; in Hammond, Louisiana.

DIED. RABBI BARUCH KORFF, 81, who founded the quixotic National Citizens' Committee for Fairness to the Presidency to root for Richard Nixon--a year before Watergate blew the Chief Executive from the White House; in Providence, Rhode Island.

DIED. GEORGE RODGER, 87, photojournalist; in Smarden, England. Rodger's photographic diary of World War II for Life magazine climaxed at Bergen-Belsen. Sickened by what he recorded, Rodger vowed never to cover another war. He kept his word.

DIED. DOROTHY MCHUGH, 87, whose career included a stint as a Ziegfeld Follies dancer before reaching its pop-culture apotheosis with the instantly camp cry of "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" in a TV spot for an emergency-alert system; in Philadelphia.

DIED. GEORGE ROMNEY, 88, three-term G.O.P. Governor of Michigan; in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Romney's 1968 presidential bid gave up the ghost before the first primary, haunted by his assertion that his earlier support of the Vietnam War was due to "brainwashing" by the U.S. military.

DIED. MIKLOS ROZSA, 88, Hungarian-born, classically trained creator of stirring Oscar-winning scores for movies like Spellbound, A Double Life and Ben-Hur; in Los Angeles.