Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, ELIZABETH L. BLAND, Logan Orlando

PLEADED NOT GUILTY. I. LEWIS (SCOOTER) LIBBY, 55, ex-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney; to a five-count indictment, including perjury and obstruction of justice, stemming from statements he made during the investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame; in Washington.

APPOINTED. DONALD POWELL, 64, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and former Texas banker and fund raiser for George W. Bush; as federal hurricane reconstruction czar; two months after Katrina thrashed the Gulf Coast; in Washington. To critics who questioned Powell's lack of experience in disaster relief, his new boss, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, said hurricane victims deserved his "leadership" and "optimism."

SENTENCED. SUNDIATA BASIR, 34, former D.C. deputy-mayoral aide who admitted to having had unprotected sex with at least seven women and girls since 1996, when he learned he was HIV-positive; to 21 years in prison; by a judge who dismissed his claim that he was in denial about his illness and called him a "violent, self-absorbed outlaw"; in Washington. Four of his partners, including a 15-year-old, later tested positive for HIV.

DIED. R.C. GORMAN, 74, internationally renowned Navajo artist; of a blood infection and pneumonia; in Albuquerque, N.M. Derided by some as repetitive and uninspired, his paintings and sculptures, often of Native American women, were hugely popular in the 1970s and '80s, drawing such fans as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Andy Warhol and appearing in New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which put one of his works on the cover of a catalog for a 1973 exhibition.

DIED. SKITCH HENDERSON, 87, avuncular, Grammy-winning maestro of TV's Golden Age; in New Milford, Conn. Born Lyle Russell Cedric Henderson, the classically trained musician got his start on radio shows starring Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby (who gave him his nickname) before landing a job as the Tonight Show's first bandleader. With his Vandyke beard and audience-participation games, he was a key part of the show, bantering with Steve Allen and, later, Johnny Carson. After a jail stint for income-tax evasion, he founded the symphonic orchestra New York Pops, which he directed until his death.

ENDRE MARTON, 95, Budapest-born Associated Press reporter who filed the first eyewitness account of the bloody Hungarian uprising against communist rule in 1956; in New York City. Competing with his wife, who worked for another wire service, he flouted the clampdown on communications by stealthily using a government telex machine to file his initial 2,000-word chronicle, which opened with a description of a Soviet tank firing at protesters "whose only weapons were Hungarian flags."

DIED. AL LOPEZ, 97, Hall of Fame catcher turned manager, known as El Senor for his genial, gentlemanly style; in Tampa, Fla. Few pennant victories have been sweeter than his American League wins in 1954, with the Cleveland Indians, and 1959, when he led the Chicago White Sox to their first World Series since 1919. The player whose teams so often finished second to the New York Yankees became the only manager whose teams finished ahead of them during the years 1949 to 1964.

DIED. GLADYS TANTAQUIDGEON, 106, medicine woman and oldest living Mohegan; in Uncasville, Conn. An expert on ancient-culture preservation, she collected tribal correspondence as well as old birth and marriage records that documented the tribe's history long after its reservation had disbanded. Her efforts helped boost the dwindling Mohegans into a federally recognized, 1,700-member tribe that now runs the successful Connecticut casino Mohegan Sun.