Milestones

By By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Jeremy Caplan, Jeninne Lee-St. John, Eleazar David Melendez, Nadia Mustafa, Logan Orlando

CONVICTED. EDGAR RAY KILLEN, 80, former Ku Klux Klansman accused of orchestrating the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi, of manslaughter; on the 41st anniversary of the crime that helped speed passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; in Philadelphia, Miss. The first person to face murder charges in the case--a jury deadlocked over his conviction on civil rights violations in a 1967 federal trial--Killen was sentenced to the maximum of 60 years in prison.

SENTENCED. JOHN RIGAS, 80, ailing founder of U.S. cable giant Adelphia Communications, and his son TIMOTHY RIGAS, 49, its former CFO; to 15 and 20 years in prison, respectively, for their 2004 convictions for bank fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy; in New York City. In looting Adelphia of $100 million and hiding its $2.3 billion debt from investors, the Rigases pushed the firm into bankruptcy, gutting the savings of many small shareholders in its former hometown of rural Coudersport, Pa.

DIED. LARRY COLLINS, 75, bestselling author, with Dominique Lapierre, of a series of meticulously researched historical page-turners, most famously 1964's Is Paris Burning?, which recounted Hitler's plan to torch the French capital if the Allies recaptured it; of a cerebral hemorrhage; in Frejus, France.

DIED. JAIME CARDINAL SIN, 76, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila who used his moral authority to propel the "people power" revolts in the Philippines that peacefully brought down the presidencies of Ferdinand Marcos and, more recently, Joseph Estrada; of renal failure; in Manila. After Marcos called for and won a snap election in 1986 that was widely suspected to be fraudulent, Sin took to the airwaves, rallying the country of devout Catholics to join a military faction that had mutinied against Marcos. After a three-day standoff, Marcos fled. Sin stepped in again to help oust the corrupt Estrada in 2001. Famous for his humor--"Welcome to the House of Sin" was his greeting to houseguests--he responded to criticisms of his secular activism by saying the church "cannot proclaim eternal salvation ... when we are blind to the physical realities which deny [people] that very salvation here on earth."

DIED. CHARLES DAVID KEELING, 77, tenacious climate scientist and conservationist whose precise measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over five decades became the undisputed basis for global-warming concerns; of a heart attack; in Hamilton, Mont. Although many had previously assumed that the oceans and plants would absorb all the gas emissions from cars and factories, his so-called Keeling Curve, which since the mid-1950s has charted steady increases in carbon dioxide in the air, clearly linked the pattern to humans' increased consumption of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide when burned.

DIED. SHANA ALEXANDER, 79, witty, trailblazing journalist and author; of cancer; in Hermosa Beach, Calif. The first female staff writer at LIFE, she became a household name for her verbal sparring with conservative James Kilpatrick on Point/Counterpoint, a segment on TV's 60 Minutes in the 1970s that was often parodied by Saturday Night Live's Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd.

DIED. BERNARD SCHRIEVER, 94, German-born retired general who led the development of the U.S. Air Force's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which could deliver a nuclear bomb from thousands of miles away; in Washington. Schriever, who also helped develop the Air Force's space program, streamlined its high-tech weaponry operations and oversaw the development of the Atlas, Titan, Thor and Minuteman missiles at the height of the cold war in the 1950s and '60s, when building the ICBM was the military's highest priority.