Milestones

By Kathleen Adams, Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Autumn DeLeon, Tam Gray, Lina Lofaro, Desa Philadelphia and Julie Rawe

ARRESTED. MARTIN FRANKEL, 44, fugitive financier whose trading firm may have been the center of a sophisticated scam that siphoned some $335 million from a web of insurance companies; by German police on a warrant charging him with U.S. federal money-laundering and wire-fraud offenses; at a hotel in Hamburg. Extradition is expected to take several months. After flying to Rome in May, Frankel vanished. At one point, a report had him in Brazil. Mona Kim, his office manager and a companion in the early part of his journey, told CNN that there was no high living: "I don't recall that I ever saw him relaxed." At his arrest, Frankel simply said, "You got me."

SENTENCED. JOHN GOTTI JR., 35, son of mobster John Gotti; to 6 1/2 years in prison; in White Plains, N.Y. He had pleaded guilty in April to charges of bribery and extortion.

DIED. WILLIAM NIERING, 75, wetland-ecology expert; in New London, Conn. He was one of the first to discover that marshes performed important functions and weren't dispensable pieces of land for developers to drain and build on.

DIED. JOAN BRADEN, 77, former State Department official and frequent hostess to Washington's political heavyweights for more than three decades; of a heart attack; in Alexandria, Va. Braden inspired the character of the matriarch in the '70s ABC series Eight Is Enough, a show based on husband Tom Braden's book about their family of 10.

DIED. CHARLES LOWE, 87, early TV producer and longtime manager to his wife of 41 years, Carol Channing; in Los Angeles. Channing filed for divorce last year, calling Lowe a "control freak."

DIED. WALDO COHN, 89, Manhattan Project biochemist who helped develop plutonium for the atom bomb; in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Cohn's methods were later used in RNA and DNA research.

DIED. LOUISE PATTERSON, 97, vigorous civil rights activist and cultural force in the Harlem Renaissance; in New York City. Patterson's myriad activities included helping her onetime boss and longtime friend Langston Hughes, left, start the Harlem Suitcase Theater and organizing a notable Marxist-friendly salon, Vanguard.