Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, ELIZABETH L. BLAND, Kathleen Kingsbury, Clayton Neuman, Julie Norwell, Logan Orlando

RELEASED. MEHMET ALI AGCA, 48, Turkish assailant who spent almost 20 years in prison in Italy for shooting and wounding Pope John Paul II in 1981, then served five more in a Turkish jail for the 1979 murder of a journalist; in Istanbul. The Pontiff, who was shot by Agca while riding in an open car through St. Peter's Square in Rome, forgave his would-be assassin and visited him in prison. But after the Turkish press railed at his release, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek ordered a review of whether Agca had been credited correctly for time served. Cicek said Agca was apparently jailed for only 19 years and 1 month in Italy--not 20 full years--and may be required to serve 11 months more.

PLEADED NOT GUILTY. JOSE PADILLA, 35, U.S. citizen held without charge for more than three years as an enemy combatant suspected of terrorist ties; to new charges--filed after his lawyers were poised to challenge his detention before the Supreme Court--of conspiracy to "murder, kidnap and maim" abroad; in Miami.

DIED. ERIC NAMESNIK, 35, U.S. Olympic swimmer twice ranked No. 1 in the world; of head injuries sustained in a car crash; in Ypsilanti, Mich. The University of Michigan standout won silvers in the 400-m individual medley at the 1992 and '96 Summer Games.

DIED. SHELLEY WINTERS, 85, zaftig, high-decibel star who played some of the movies' most famous victims; in Beverly Hills. Born Shirley Schrift, she had the attributes of a '50s Hollywood dish--latkes, perhaps--and could twist prim dialogue into raunch with her throaty laugh. But the shrillness in a Winters character gave men homicidal urges. She was strangled by Ronald Colman (A Double Life) and drowned by Montgomery Clift (A Place in the Sun). Robert Mitchum slit her throat (The Night of the Hunter); James Mason drove her to fatal madness (Lolita). She won two Oscars, for The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue, and lent her increasing heft to The Poseidon Adventure. But her ripest later role was as herself: a tell-all memoirist and rowdy talk-show guest who was still entertaining audiences by exasperating men. DIED. SIDNEY FRANK, 86, eccentric beverage-marketing guru who in 1997 introduced the "superpremium" Grey Goose vodka--with its frosted bottle, Cezanne-inspired label and $30-a-bottle price tag--and seven years later sold it to Bacardi for more than $2 billion; in San Diego. In the 1970s, Frank sensed an unquenched niche in a more rambunctious market--college students--and began importing the near unknown German liqueur Jagermeister, sometimes compared to cough syrup. With the help of a cadre of pretty "Jagerettes," who poured free shots in bars, the brand soared in sales from some 500 cases in 1974 to more than 2 million last year.

DIED. BIRGIT NILSSON, 87, international opera star whose rich timbre, dramatic interpretations and unrivaled stamina made her the finest Wagnerian soprano of her generation; on Christmas Day; in her hometown, Vastra Karup, Sweden. Level-headed and sharp-witted, Nilsson thrilled audiences from New York to Milan in operas by Verdi (Aida), Strauss (Elektra, below) and Puccini (Turandot) but won her most enthusiastic fans with dynamic lead performances in such Wagner works as The Ring of the Nibelung and Tristan und Isolde. Asked to name the primary requirement for playing Isolde, a punishing role she sang some 200 times, she said, "Comfortable shoes."