Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Sean Gregory, Janice M. Horowitz And Sora Song

DIED. JOHNNY PAYCHECK, 64, outlaw country singer known equally for his blaring, bad-ass anthems of love and revenge and the real-life troubles behind his surly image; in Nashville, Tenn., where he had been bedridden in a nursing home with asthma and emphysema. Of his dozens of hits on more than 30 albums, PayCheck, born Donald Eugene Lytle (in the '60s he took the name of a boxer KO'd by Joe Louis), was best known for the 1977 workingman's chant Take This Job and Shove It. After a battle with drugs and alcohol, bankruptcy and a prison sentence for shooting a stranger, PayCheck--whose other hits included (Don't Take Her) She's All I Got and I'm the Only Hell (Mama Ever Raised)--became a born-again Christian. His music, he once said, was always "about life and situations. Situation comedies and situation life."

INDICTED. SAMI AMIN AL-ARIAN, 45, University of South Florida professor, along with seven other men, for running an operation that supported, financed and relayed messages for the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and blamed for the deaths of more than 100 Israelis. He faces up to life in prison.

CONVICTED. MOUNIR EL-MOTASSADEQ, 28, Moroccan student; of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder in the aiding of al-Qaeda members planning the Sept. 11 attacks, in part by wiring money transfers to one of the 9/11 pilots; in Hamburg, Germany. The first to be convicted in the attacks, he received the maximum allowable sentence of 15 years in prison, which he appealed. Though he admitted attending a training camp, he claimed he was an unwitting friend of the plotters.

DIED. VERA HRUBA RALSTON, 79, Czech-born Olympic skater and Ice Capades sweetheart who went on to a less stellar career in B movies during the 1940s and '50s (The Lady and the Monster; I, Jane Doe); of cancer; in Santa Barbara, Calif. She added the name Ralston (from a breakfast cereal) because people stumbled over Hruba.

DIED. ORVILLE FREEMAN, 84, ex-Governor of Minnesota and Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; of complications from Alzheimer's disease; in Minneapolis. After supporting Hubert Humphrey's failed bid, he gave Kennedy's nominating speech at the 1960 Democratic Convention. Later, in his White House post, he expanded food aid to the poor and promoted aid to developing nations.

DIED. ISSER HAREL, 91, legendary Israeli spy and one of the founders of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, which he ran from 1952 to '63; in Petah Tiqwah, Israel. During Mossad's early years, he directed the 1960 capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who had for years been living under an assumed name in Argentina and was later tried and executed in Israel. Harel recalled dragging Eichmann back to Israel and walking into Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's office with the message "I brought you a present."