Milestones

By Melissa August, Ann Marie Bonardi, Val Castronovo, Matthew Cooper, Daren Fonda, Benjamin Nugent, Julie Rawe, Victoria Rainert

LAWSUIT SETTLED. Between DANA CARVEY, 45, impressionist comedian, and surgeon Elias Hanna, over a botched double-bypass operation in 1998; for an undisclosed sum, which will be given to charity; in San Francisco.

SUED. JAMES BROWN, aging Godfather of Soul; for wrongful termination and sexual harassment of a female former employee; in Los Angeles.

DIED. MARK HUGHES, 44, multimillionaire founder of a controversial health-products company, Herbalife; of natural causes; in Malibu, Calif. Hughes' sales methods and enthusiastic claims for weight-loss supplements led to federal scrutiny and fines in the 1980s, though his company has since prospered.

DIED. MIGUEL GIL MORENO DE MORA, 32, and KURT SCHORK, 53, veteran war correspondents; in an ambush by rebels 50 miles outside Freetown, Sierra Leone. Two other journalists were injured and four Sierra Leonean soldiers killed in the attack. (See Eulogy, below.)

DIED. WILLIAM DALE JENNINGS, 82, author, publisher and combative gay-rights pioneer whose writings and protests led to greater tolerance of homosexuality in the late '50s; of respiratory failure; in Los Angeles.

DIED. SIR JOHN GIELGUD, 96, towering Shakespearean actor; in Buckinghamshire, England. (See Appreciation, page 84).

DIED. DAME BARBARA CARTLAND, 98, best-selling romance novelist whose 723 books sold more than 1 billion copies worldwide; in Hertfordshire, England. Cartland published her first novel in 1925, was dubbed the queen of romance fiction and became beloved for creating virginal heroines in rococo plotlines. Her ability to write a novel a week, dictating to secretaries while reclining on a sofa, earned her a glamorous, bejeweled lifestyle, a host of pink gowns and a bit part in a real-life rococo drama: step-grandmother to Princess Diana.