BORN. To Oscar-Winning Songwriter Paul Williams, 40 (Evergreen), and his wife and accountant Katie, 30, a son, their first child; in Los Angeles. Name: Christopher Cole. Weight: 6 lbs. 5 oz.

DIED. Omar Torrijos Herrera, 52, cigar-chewing brigadier general of Panama's National Guard and the country's de facto strongman, who negotiated the return by the U.S. of the Panama Canal Zone to his country's control; in an airplane crash; in the western jungles of Panama. Torrijos joined the National Guard in 1952, and in 1968 helped to lead a coup against President Arnulfo Arias. The next year Torrijos effectively took sole power and served an official term as chief of government from 1972 to 1978. Occasionally ironfisted with local dissenters, he showed his formidable political skill in manipulating volatile local opinion over the Canal issue, leading to the 1977 treaties that were ratified--barely--by the U.S. Senate in 1978.

DIED. Sidney (Paddy) Chayefsky, 58, Bronx-born, barrel-chested playwright who won three Oscars (for Marty, The Hospital and Network); of cancer; in Manhattan. First successful in TV, he wrote Marty as a humorous love story, was startled when viewers cried. He had three Broadway hits (Middle of the Night, The Tenth Man and Gideon). The essence of his writing, he said, was to portray "characters caught in the decline of their society."

DIED. Frances Ilg, 78, pediatrician, writer and a source of practical, research-based advice for generations of American parents; in Manitowish Waters, Wis. Ilg co-founded the Connecticut-based Gesell Institute of Child Development in 1950 and co-authored more than 20 books tracing the behavioral patterns of children from infancy through adolescence.

DIED. William Wyler, 79, film director and three-time Oscar winner, for Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Ben-Hur (1959); of a heart attack; in Beverly Hills, Calif. Born in French Alsace, Wyler immigrated to New York at age 19 and worked as a publicity agent and a script clerk before directing his first silent film in 1925. Though his work ranged from musicals (Funny Girl, 1968) to westerns (The Big Country, 1958), Wyler was best known for his film adaptations of such novels as Sinclair Lewis' Dodsworth (1936) and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1939), and Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes (1941).

DIED. James Walsh, 90, Roman Catholic bishop and former superior-general of the Maryknoll Fathers who, as a missionary, was imprisoned in China from 1958 to 1970 on charges of spying for the Vatican and the U.S.; in Ossining, N.Y.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.