MILESTONES

CLEARED. Dallas Cowboys stars MICHAEL IRVIN, 30, and ERIK WILLIAMS, 28; after a 23-year-old waitress who had accused Williams of raping her while Irvin held a gun to her head admitted that she had made up the whole story; in Dallas. Irvin, who is on probation after pleading no contest to drug charges, had strongly denied the woman's story, adding, "I'm looking forward to seeing how you guys go rewrite, reprint, rerun all these things..."

SENTENCED. HEIDI FLEISS, 31, "Hollywood Madam"; to 37 months in jail; for tax evasion, laundering profits from her call-girl business and conspiring to hide her crimes; in Los Angeles.

DIAGNOSED. ARNOLD PALMER, 67, golf master whose exuberant style helped popularize the sport in the late '50s; with prostate cancer. His prognosis was unknown. He said he would withdraw from play until the cancer is "taken care of."

HOSPITALIZED. PAUL TSONGAS, 55, former U.S. Senator; in serious but stable condition for treatment of liver dysfunction and an irregular heartbeat; in Boston. There was no evidence that Tsongas' lymphoma, diagnosed in 1983, had recurred.

HOSPITALIZED. BORIS YELTSIN, 65, Russian President who underwent quintuple-bypass surgery in November; in stable condition for treatment of pneumonia; in Moscow.

HOSPITALIZED. FRANK SINATRA, 81, singing legend; after suffering what his doctor called an "uncomplicated" heart attack; in Los Angeles.

DIED. CASEY MILLER, 77, advocate of nonsexist language and coauthor of Words and Women (1976), who helped inspire changes to the written and spoken word, including the use of chairperson; of lung disease; in East Haddam, Connecticut.

DIED. JESSE WHITE, 79, kindly character actor who appeared in more than 60 films and was best known as TV's original thumb-twiddling Maytag repairman; of a heart attack; in Los Angeles.

DIED. BURTON LANE, 84, high school dropout turned celebrated stage and film composer who wrote the music for the Broadway shows Finian's Rainbow and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever; in New York City. Lane won a Grammy and was nominated for a Tony for On a Clear Day in 1966.

DIED. HARRY HELMSLEY, 87, crafty real estate billionaire whose crowning achievement was the purchase of the Empire State Building in 1961 for a then-record price of $65 million; in Scottsdale, Arizona. His success was tarnished by tax-evasion charges, resulting in his wife Leona's four-year sentence in 1989. A judge ruled Helmsley incompetent to stand trial.