Milestones

By Melissa August, Peter Bailey, Elizabeth L. Bland, Barbara Burke and Unmesh Kher

CHARGE DROPPED. AGAINST MARTHA STEWART; of securities fraud; in New York City. The judge said the charge--that Stewart deceived investors in her company by denying that she had engaged in insider trading of ImClone stock--was based on too little evidence for the jury to consider. After it hears closing arguments, the jury will decide whether she is guilty of the four remaining charges: conspiracy, obstruction of justice and two counts of lying to investigators.

ARRESTED. JAMAL LEWIS, 25, Baltimore Ravens star running back; on federal drug charges that he tried to help a childhood friend buy cocaine in the summer of 2000, one month before he signed a $35.3 million contract with the Ravens; in Atlanta. Indicted as part of a drug-trafficking investigation, Lewis has pleaded not guilty to the charges that threaten to end his NFL career. If convicted, he could face 10 years to life in prison.

SENTENCED TO DEATH. SHOKO ASAHARA, 48, former leader of the religious sect that released sarin gas into the Tokyo subway in 1995; in Tokyo. The founder of Aum Shinrikyo, a cult that combined Buddhist and Hindu philosophies, was convicted of masterminding the attack that killed 12 and injured 5,500.

DIED. BORIS TRAJKOVSKI, 47, President of Macedonia; in a plane crash; in southern Bosnia. A Methodist minister and respected moderate, he was elected in 1999 as the country's second President and won popular support for his inclusionary policies that welcomed ethnic Albanians into state government.

DIED. F. BOOKER NOE II, 74, former master distiller of Jim Beam bourbon; after a long illness; in Bardstown, Ky. A grandson of Jim Beam, who ran the family company from 1892 until 1944, Noe worked for almost 50 years at the distillery and in 1988 created Booker's Bourbon, an undiluted, unfiltered small-batch whiskey that helped establish a new market for bourbon, which had been left behind by the growing popularity of vodka and gin.

DIED. JOHN RANDOLPH, 88, avuncular character actor; in Los Angeles. Familiar on TV (Roseanne) and in movies (Serpico, You've Got Mail), he had an even longer career onstage, winning a Tony for his role as a left-wing grandfather in Neil Simon's Broadway Bound. The role echoed his life as a self-proclaimed "old radical" who was blacklisted in the 1950s.

DIED. BART HOWARD, 88, who wrote Fly Me to the Moon; in Carmel, N.Y. The song, whose original title was In Other Words, became popular in 1960 after Peggy Lee sang it on The Ed Sullivan Show, though Frank Sinatra's version is better known. Howard, who had been writing cabaret songs for two decades, said, "It took me 20 years to find out how to write a song in 20 minutes."

DIED. DANIEL J. BOORSTIN, 89, historian and public servant; in Washington. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for The Americans: The Democratic Experience, a cultural history of post--Civil War America, and spent 13 years as Librarian of Congress. Famous for the enlightened skepticism with which he regarded popular culture, he warned, "Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models."