Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, ELIZABETH L. BLAND, Clayton Neuman, Julie Norwell, Logan Orlando

EXPECTING. PRINCESS KIKO, 39, daughter-in-law of Japanese Emperor Akihito; her third child, news of which has quieted a heated national debate over a succession law as the public awaits word of the baby's gender; in Tokyo. With no male heirs in sight--both Kiko and Crown Princess Masako have so far given birth only to girls--many Japanese have been clamoring to revise the law to allow an empress and subsequently her children to ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne, an event Japan has not witnessed in more than two centuries and officially banned in 1947.

ESCAPED. JAMAL AL-BADAWI, 36, al-Qaeda operative sentenced to death for masterminding the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, which killed 17 sailors; from a Yemeni prison, along with 22 other convicts; through a 460-ft. tunnel officials said was dug by inmates as well as conspirators outside the prison; in Sana'a. The carefully planned escape raised questions about whether al-Badawi, who broke out of another Yemeni jail in 2003 and was recaptured 11 months later, had assistance from Yemeni officials.

DIED. FRANKLIN COVER, 77, longtime character actor best known for his role as Tom Willis in The Jeffersons, the white half of TV's first interracial couple; of pneumonia; in Englewood, N.J.

DIED. FREDDIE LAKER, 83, ebullient airline-industry underdog and visionary who in the 1970s pioneered the concept of cheap fares for the masses with his short-lived but much admired Skytrain service; in Hollywood, Fla. Launched in 1978, the London-based service encouraged flyers to cross the Atlantic casually, without even booking a flight. (If a flight was full, passengers simply waited for the next one.) Though his company disbanded in 1982 after bigger airlines slashed their fares, Laker became a hero to entrepreneurs including his fellow Briton Virgin Atlantic CEO Richard Branson.

DIED. NORMAN SHUMWAY, 83, the first physician to perform a successful heart transplant in the U.S.; in Palo Alto, Calif. His first transplant patient, in 1968, died of complications after 14 days. In the years that followed, most transplants ended in lethal infections or organ rejection soon after surgery. But Shumway, a surgical mentor to Tennessee Senator Bill Frist, pressed on as others were giving up. With an impressive Stanford University team, he found ways to use smaller doses of toxic antirejection drugs; was an early proponent of a safer alternative, cyclosporine; and dramatically improved transplant survival rates.

DIED. REUVEN FRANK, 85, wry, trailblazing TV news producer; in Englewood, N.J. In a radio-influenced era in which TV news often meant anchors reading headlines, the NBC News president made the most of the new medium, infusing such proteges as Tom Brokaw and Linda Ellerbee with his zeal for compelling storytelling that let pictures shine. Among the Emmy winner's best-known innovations was pairing two anchors in The Huntley-Brinkley Report whose lively pacing, witty asides and hokey sign-off ("Goodnight, David," "Goodnight, Chet") are credited with changing the style of TV news.

DIED. REBECCA WEBB CARRANZA, 98, pioneering tortilla-chip maker; in Phoenix, Ariz. In the 1940s, as her family's California company, the El Zarape Tortilla Factory, led the industry into machine-made tortillas, she took home a handful of the many misshapen rejects for a family party, cut them into triangles and fried them. The chips, a hit with her guests and later for the company, helped popularize the snack and earned her the industry's innovator award, the Golden Tortilla.