Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Ellin Martens, Julie Norwell

RELEASED. The autopsy results of James Zadroga, 34, New York City police detective who, after the 9/11 attacks, spent 470 hours sifting through the dusty ruins of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in search of victims' remains, and who died Jan. 6 of respiratory failure; showing that Zadroga had "innumerable foreign body granules" in his lungs and that his death was "directly related" to his post-9/11 efforts, the first known fatality attributed to such work.

DIED. June Pointer, 52, who, with her siblings, formed the Grammy-winning pop group the Pointer Sisters and recorded such '80s megahits as Jump (For My Love) and I'm So Excited; of cancer; in Los Angeles. The sisters' success waned after the 1983 release of their 3 million--selling album Break Out, and in 2003 June--who struggled with drug addiction and her mental health--was replaced by her niece.

DIED. William Woo, 69, courtly, aggressive journalist who in 1986 became the first Asian American to lead a major U.S. newspaper when he was named editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; of colorectal cancer; in Palo Alto, Calif.

DIED. Frank Gibney, 81, author and former TIME correspondent who gave wary Americans some of the first accessible, textured portraits of Japan after World War II; in Santa Barbara, Calif. Among the former Navy intelligence officer's books were Five Gentlemen of Japan and The Pacific Century, which in the early 1990s became an Emmy-winning documentary.

DIED. Vilgot Sjoman, 81, maverick Swedish film director and protege of Ingmar Bergman whose taboo-challenging, sexually explicit 1967 film I Am Curious (Yellow) was briefly banned by U.S. censors before going on to become the most profitable foreign film in America until 1994, when Like Water for Chocolate broke the record; in Stockholm.

DIED. Muriel Spark, 88, British author of poetry, short stories and more than 20 novels whose elegantly spare, often satirical writing explored morality and perceptions of truth; in Florence, Italy. A Foreign Office propagandist during World War II, Spark converted to Catholicism in 1954 and credited her faith for "inner stability which enables me to write better." Her best-known novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), about an eccentric, Mussolini-worshipping teacher at a girls' school, was based on Spark's Edinburgh school days. Maggie Smith won an Oscar for playing the title role in the 1969 film.

DIED. Helen Cohn, 92, who helped her husband and business partner Nudie create garish, rhinestone-studded garb favored by glittery entertainers from the 1940s to the '80s; in Valencia, Calif. Among their most famous creations was a $10,000 gold lame suit for Elvis Presley (the profit for Nudie's Rodeo Tailors: $9,950). The ensembles were most popular among country stars like Roy Rogers and Buck Owens, who wore Nudies to their graves. The Cohns' motto: "It's better to be looked over than overlooked."