Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Sora Song, Deirdre Van Dyk

SENTENCED. ANDREA YATES, 37, mentally ill mother convicted of drowning her five children last June; to life in prison, with eligibility for parole after 40 years; in Houston. The jury took 35 minutes to decide to spare Yates the alternative sentence, death by lethal injection.

SEPARATING. JAMES GANDOLFINI, 40, TV mobster, from his wife of three years, Marcy, a former public relations executive; in New York City. The Sopranos star's publicist said he had initiated divorce proceedings. The couple have a son, Michael, 2.

DIED. JEAN-PAUL RIOPELLE, 78, abstract expressionist whose works hang in New York City's Museum of Modern Art and London's Tate Gallery; in Ile-aux-Grues, Que. Considered Canada's most important modern painter, he became the first Canadian to win a prize at the Venice Biennale, in 1962.

DIED. SYLVESTER (PAT) WEAVER, 93, pathfinding TV executive; former president of NBC; creator of the Today show; and father of actress Sigourney Weaver; of pneumonia; in Santa Barbara, Calif. After joining NBC in 1949, Weaver realized it could move beyond the production methods of radio--in which shows were owned and controlled by sponsors--and become an independent production and broadcast company. His vision is still enjoyed by millions seven days a week.

DIED. THOMAS WINSHIP, 81, ebullient, liberal editor of the Boston Globe, who elevated the paper into a top-ranked national contender that won 12 Pulitzer Prizes during his 1965-84 tenure; of lymphoma; in Boston. Proud of his "short attention span" and known for his constant stream of ideas, Winship consistently opposed the Vietnam War--three Globe reporters landed on President Nixon's "enemies" list--and won a Pulitzer for the paper's coverage of Boston's court-ordered desegregation in the 1970s. "I never had a boring week," he said.

DIED. ESTHER AFUA OCLOO, 83, Ghanaian entrepreneur who tirelessly promoted women's economic development; in Accra. As the first chairwoman of Women's World Banking, which she helped found in 1979, Ocloo pioneered the practice of microlending, or financing tiny businesses with successive loans as small as $50.

DIED. JAMES TOBIN, 84, Nobel-prizewinning economist and adviser to President John F. Kennedy; in New Haven, Conn. A Yale professor and promoter of the Keynesian theory, which advocates government intervention to regulate economic cycles, Tobin crafted the Kennedy tax cut that spurred the boom of the early 1960s. His Nobel-winning portfolio-selection theory--which posits that investors do not simply seek the highest yielding assets but vary them according to risk tolerance and other factors--changed conventional thinking on how Americans spend and invest money.

DIED. THOMAS GRIFFITH, 86, versatile, accomplished Time Inc. editor and author; in New York City. Griffith, who wrote a popular press column for TIME, eschewed advocacy writing and promoted the creation of a dispassionate national press council. The final editor of the weekly LIFE magazine, which closed in 1972, Griffith also wrote three books, including the 1995 Harry and Teddy, which tracked the intersecting lives of TIME's founder Henry Luce and ace reporter Theodore H. White.

DIED. IRENE WORTH, 85, versatile grande dame of the U.S. and British stage; in New York City. Born Harriet Abrams in Lincoln, Neb., Worth lived in England for years, performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her celebrated Broadway roles included Alexandra del Lago in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth and the title role in Edward Albee's Tiny Alice. She won the last of her three Tony Awards in 1991 for her portrayal of Grandma Kurnitz in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers.