Milestones

By Melissa August, Elizabeth L. Bland, Janice Horowitz, Roy B. White And Rebecca Winters

INDICTED. R. KELLY, 35, the Grammy-winning R.-and-B. star behind the gospel-inspired I Believe I Can Fly and the carnally inspired Bump 'n' Grind; in Chicago; on 21 counts of child pornography. The indictment stems from a videotape that purportedly shows Kelly having sex with an underage girl. Kelly denied the charges. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

DIED. CAROLINE KNAPP, 42, humorist, whose readers learned about the darker side of her life--her 20-year struggle with alcoholism--in her 1996 best seller, Drinking: A Love Story; of lung cancer; in Cambridge, Mass.

DIED. DEE DEE RAMONE, 50, over-the-top punk-rock pioneer who co-founded the hypernoisy Ramones; of a suspected drug overdose; in Hollywood. Born Douglas Colvin, the volatile bassist and songwriter admitted to a long history of drug use in his autobiography, Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones (2000). His death came three months after the Ramones were inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

DIED. FLORA LEWIS, 79, journalist and author; in Paris. Lewis covered pivotal world events, from the Hungarian uprising in 1956 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, for the Washington Post, International Herald Tribune and the New York Times.

DIED. LEW WASSERMAN, 89, the last of Hollywood's legendary movie moguls, who headed up MCA, the parent company of Universal Pictures, for four decades; in Beverly Hills, Calif. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Wasserman worked nights as a movie usher in high school. After impressing an MCA executive while promoting talent for a Cleveland nightclub, Wasserman was hired and went on to represent such clients as Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Stewart. Fiercely protective of his stars, Wasserman kept Clark Gable's drunk-driving arrest and Betty Grable's premarital pregnancy out of the papers. He revolutionized the film business, breaking the hold of studio contracts that locked up actors, embracing television and, with Jaws, inaugurating the summer blockbuster. Wasserman's power began to wane when MCA was sold to Matsushita in 1990.