Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, ELIZABETH L. BLAND, Leslie-Bernard Joseph, Jeninne Lee-St. John, Coco Masters, Golnoush Niknejad, Julie Rawe

SENTENCED. BERNIE EBBERS, 63, former CEO of WorldCom, convicted in March of orchestrating the $11 billion accounting fraud that toppled the telecommunications giant; to 25 years in prison, the latest and harshest in a string of recent sentences for white-collar executives; in New York City. Under federal guidelines, Ebbers, who maintained his innocence and plans to appeal, must serve at least 85%, or 21 years, of the term, making it all but a life sentence.

RELEASED. CYRUS KAR, 44, American filmmaker suspected of terrorist activities and held in solitary confinement at a U.S. military jail in Iraq for 54 days without being charged; after his family filed a federal lawsuit alleging civil rights violations and a military review board determined that he was not an "enemy combatant"; near Baghdad. In Iraq to film a documentary about a Persian king, he was arrested when a taxi he was taking was stopped at a checkpoint and security forces found bombmaking paraphernalia inside. Kar said the items did not belong to him; the taxi driver is still being held.

DIED. ROWLAND WILSON, 74, cartoonist for Esquire, the New Yorker and, most famously, Playboy, where his full-page watercolors were a relatively sex-free staple of the men's magazine; of heart failure; in Encinitas, Calif. A longtime painter of witty ads for New England Life Insurance, he helped animate such Disney films as Tarzan and The Little Mermaid.

DIED. ARTHUR FLETCHER, 80, adviser to G.O.P. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush, dubbed the "father of affirmative action"; in Washington. A onetime defensive end for the Baltimore Colts and Los Angeles Rams, he developed the so-called Revised Philadelphia Plan as Nixon's Assistant Labor Secretary. Based on an earlier effort to diversify that city's racist construction unions, his was the first workable outline for affirmative action and became the blueprint for subsequent programs. He later ran the United Negro College Fund, where he coined the slogan "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

DIED. JOHN KING, 87, pugnacious Thatcherite tycoon who in 1981 masterminded the successful privatization of the foundering state-run British Airways (known to suffering Brits as Bloody Awful) and transformed it into a profitable international powerhouse; in Leicestershire, England. After slashing jobs 30% and revamping BA's image, he sparred with archrival Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic, who accused him of such "dirty tricks" as computer hacking and passenger poaching. King ultimately was ordered to publicly apologize and pay libel judgments to Branson and Virgin.

DIED. MICKEY OWEN, 89, All-Star catcher of the 1930s and '40s best known for an infamous play that helped the New York Yankees defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1941 World Series; in Mount Vernon, Mo. In the ninth inning of Game 4, Owen dropped a third strike against the Yanks' Tommy Henrich that would have ended the game and given the Dodgers the win. Instead, the Yanks went on to win 7-4 and took the series 4 games to 1.

DIED. FRANCES LANGFORD, 92, actress of the 1930s and '40s best known as a regular on Bob Hope's USO tours that traveled the globe to entertain the troops during World War II, for which she was dubbed the "Sweetheart of the Fighting Fronts"; in Jensen Beach, Fla. In Hollywood she appeared in mostly B musicals and played Blanche, the nagging wife in radio's The Bickersons. But her appearances before homesick G.I.s in Europe, South Korea and Vietnam, warbling songs like her trademark I'm in the Mood for Love, earned her global fans.