Milestones

By Melissa August, ELIZABETH L. BLAND, Jeninne Lee-St. John, Clayton Neuman, Richard Lacayo

ARRESTED. CLAUDE ALLEN, 45, who served as President Bush's top domestic-policy adviser before resigning suddenly last month. Allen is charged with stealing more than $5,000 in goods at Target and other stores, then returning them for refunds--charges he denies.

FOUND DEAD. TOM FOX, 54, American peace activist who, with three colleagues, was taken hostage in Iraq in November. Fox's battered body turned up in a Baghdad dump. So far, at least 55 foreign hostages have been killed by their captors in Iraq.

MISTRIAL DECLARED. In the retrial of JOHN (JUNIOR) GOTTI, 42, son of reputed Gambino-family kingpin John Gotti who was indicted in 2004 for racketeering and ordering the 1992 kidnapping of a radio host who had insulted his father on the air; in New York City. The jury hit an impasse over Gotti's claim that he had "retired" before July 1999--which, if true, would place him beyond the five-year statute of limitations on the racketeering charges. A previous jury also could not agree on his guilt. Prosecutors intend to try again.

RESIGNED. GALE NORTON, 52, as Secretary of the Interior; in Washington. The first woman to hold the post, she led the Bush Administration's controversial effort to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

DIED. DANA REEVE, 44, singer, actress and widow of Superman actor Christopher Reeve who raised millions for research on treatments for paralysis after her husband became a quadriplegic after a 1995 horseback-riding accident; of lung cancer; in New York City. Reeve, a nonsmoker who lost her husband in 2004 and her mother just four months later, had her cancer diagnosed last August.

DIED. KIRBY PUCKETT, 45, Hall of Fame outfielder who led the Minnesota Twins to World Series titles in 1991 and 1994; of a stroke; in Phoenix, Ariz. Before Game 6 of the 1991 Series, he famously told team-mates, "Tonight I'm drivin' the bus, boys," then hit two homers to force a Game 7--which the Twins won to capture the title.

DIED. SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, 64, wily, charismatic power-addicted former Yugoslav President and icon of Serbian nationalism known as the Butcher of the Balkans; in his cell at the U.N. detention center near the Hague, where he was the first head of state to be prosecuted for genocide; apparently of natural causes. Milosevic, who had heart trouble, had been on trial since 2002 for his alleged role as architect of the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and other crimes. His decade-long rule over Yugoslavia and Serbia produced four wars, which led to 250,000 deaths and introduced the term ethnic cleansing. Son of a defrocked Orthodox priest and a teacher, Milosevic lost power in a 2000 election. Serbia's new leaders extradited him in 2001. He defended himself at the International Criminal Tribunal, defiant to the end.

DIED. JOHN PROFUMO, 91, former British War Minister who resigned from the Cabinet in 1963 after lying to Parliament about his affair with a prostitute, Christine Keeler, then 19, whose other clients included a Soviet diplomat; in London. The Profumo scandal hastened the end of the eight-year reign of the Conservative government and encouraged the rise of a combative press.

APPRECIATION

By the time GORDON PARKS died last week at 93 in his New York City home, he had made his way through a succession of fields--photography, literature, film--and left enduring work in every one. The novelist who wrote The Learning Tree also composed concertos; the poet also directed Shaft. But it's as a photographer that Parks will be remembered most. Especially at LIFE, where, as the first African American on its photo staff, he could shoot a Brazilian slum or a Paris fashion show with the same sure mastery. Above all, he made countless pictures of African-American life at a time when white racism was the rule--sometimes the law--around the country.

The son of a Kansas tenant farmer, Parks was working as a railway-car waiter in the 1930s when he picked up a magazine left by a passenger and had his first look at images of the Depression-era U.S. made by Dorothea Lange and other Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers. Within a few years, he had bought a camera and started making portraits. By 1942 he was in Washington as an FSA photographer. On his first day there, Parks was refused service at a clothing store, theater and restaurant because he was black. He channeled his anger into his first famous photograph, made that day. American Gothic, right, is a portrait of a black cleaning woman in front of an American flag, her solemnity saying worlds about the limits that she--and he--met every day. Parks' art--in all media--is the work of a man who blew away those limits all his life.