Milestones

By Josh Tyrangiel; Harriet Barovick; Elizabeth L. Bland; Heather Won Tesoriero; Rebecca Winters; Li Zhou

DIED. JASON MIZELL, A.K.A. JAM MASTER JAY, 37, jovial DJ of the boundary-breaking rap group Run-D.M.C.; of a gunshot wound to the head; in Queens, N.Y. Police say a gunman gained access to Mizell's studio and shot the hip-hop star at close range during a recording session. Also in the studio were five others, one of whom was shot in the leg. The possibility that Mizell's death might be linked to previous rap violence was particularly troubling to those who knew him best. He was widely hailed as the nicest man in rap, not just because he remained in his beloved Hollis, Queens, the middle-class neighborhood where he grew up but also because he was an active member of the community, paying rent for the elderly and indigent and mentoring young rappers and DJs at his Scratch DJ Academy. As a DJ in his own right, Mizell was the first to fuse rap beats with rock melodies, fueling Run-D.M.C.'s historic crossover to the pop charts and changing the sound of pop music forever. --By Josh Tyrangiel

BORN. To SARAH JESSICA PARKER, 37, and MATTHEW BRODERICK, 40; a 6-lb., 8-oz. son; in New York City. The actors named their firstborn James Wilke Broderick after his late grandfather.

INDICTED. ANDREW FASTOW, 40, former chief financial officer of Enron; on 78 counts of fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and other charges; by a grand jury in Houston. The first executive at the energy giant to be indicted, Fastow allegedly engineered an intricate web of partnerships that hid Enron's financial ills and directed millions of dollars into his pockets.

DIED. ALINA PIENKOWSKA, 50, unassuming shipyard nurse whose outrage over working conditions helped spur Poland's labor movement turned political party, Solidarity; of cancer; in Gdansk. When welder Lech Walesa declared a strike in their shipyard on Aug. 14, 1980, Pienkowska defied authorities who were about to sever phone lines by immediately alerting a fellow dissident to spread the news--an act that led to hundreds of other strikes across the country. She then persuaded Walesa and others not to let down strikers in other cities by agreeing to the management's settlement offer--a decision that gave the movement its name.

DIED. EDWIN R. BAYLEY, 84, founding dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley; in Green Bay, Wis. As chief political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal from 1947 to 1959, he charted the rise of Senator Joe McCarthy and later chastised the press for its uncritical coverage of the red-baiting Senator in his book Joe McCarthy and the Press. "Stand up, Ed," McCarthy once told him at a rally, "and let the people see what a communist looks like."

DIED. DUKE OF BEDFORD, 85, practical British aristocrat who converted his family's ancient estate, Woburn Abbey, into an amusement park to raise enough money to keep it in the family; in Santa Fe, N.M. "I do not relish the scorn of the peerage," he once said of the horror he inspired in some aristocrats. "But it is better to be looked down on than overlooked."

DIED. ANDRE DE TOTH, 89, Hungarian-born filmmaker known for westerns, war movies, film noir and the 1953 3-D classic House of Wax, starring Vincent Price as the murderous proprietor of a wax museum; in Burbank, Calif. His stylish B films, such as Pitfall, None Shall Escape and Ramrod (co-starring Veronica Lake, to whom he was married for eight years), have gained an enthusiastic cult following that includes director Martin Scorsese. Of his tales of survival in the face of menace, De Toth said, "Life is violent. To depict it truthfully can show us what not to do."